Epilogue: Something New

Abstract

Since the theory of elasticity originated primarily in the first half of the nineteenth century, most of the original work supporting the presentation in this introductory text is many decades old. Occasionally new developments emerge, even in a mature field. A recent contribution, countering the classical notion that material cannot have a negative Poisson’s ratio, is the development of a substance called antirubber that bulges in the middle when the ends are pulled. Also, modern material science has recently explored methods to coax metallic alloys into shapes that were only possible from molded plastics. The materials are known as “Glassimetals” referring to the alloys called metallic glasses and possess properties that promise to be useful as structural components or protective casings.