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The secret behind the miracle coating.
Line-X is commonly used as a truck bedliner spray to help protect the truck bed against the elements. But it can do more than that. Essentially, Line-X is a spray-on coating that gives any surface a near-indestructible outer layer.
And we do mean near-indestructible. The folks at How Ridiculous have tested the power of Line-X by dropping all sorts of things covered in it from a 150ft tower. They found that Line-X can protect a watermelon, an egg, and a lightbulb from shattering on impact, though not save cargo from damage inside the otherwise indestructible shell.
More practically, Line-X is used in bulletproof vests, bomb-proof buildings, and in all sorts of applications where a thin, highly durable coating is necessary.
But what exactly is Line-X? Derek Muller at Veritasium decided to find out:
Line-X is a mixture of two different molecules with very long names. The two molecules are kept separate until they're sprayed on a surface, at which point they undergo a chemical reaction.
In this chemical reaction, the two molecules bind together, creating a single molecule called polyurea. This molecule contains very long chains of atoms, and these long chains are the secret of Line-X's strength.
These chains are long enough that they get tangled together at the atomic scale, which makes them extremely hard to pull apart. At the same time, they're extremely flexible, which produces the elastic effect that makes for such a terrific video.
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