Abstract
The following article is an edited transcript of a talk presented in Symposium X — Frontiers of Materials Research at the 2002 Materials Research Society Fall Meeting in Boston on December 2, 2002. From Bessemer steel used on the first motorized bicycle in 1871 to sintered aluminum ceramic composites and TiN thin-film coatings used on standard production machines today, motorcycles have been at the forefront of the use of high-performance materials. Thanks to developments in materials technology, relatively inexpensive mass-produced motorcycles are now capable of achieving speeds of <190 mph.
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Bibliography
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Additional information
Charles M. Falco, a professor of optical sciences at the University of Arizona in Tucson, holds the university’s Chaur in Condensed Matter Physics. He has published more than 250 research articles on various aspects of materials physics and has given over 200 invited talks on his research at conferences and research institutions in 20 countries. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the Optical Society of America. Falco’s current research involves the growth and study of magnetic ultrathin films and spintronics devices by molecular-beam epitaxy. Falco has assembled one of the most extensive private libraries of English-language motorcycle books, comprising more than 90% of all such books published. He brought this scholarly background in the subject when in 1998, he co-curated an exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum titled “The Art of the Motorcycle.” This industrial design exhibition set an all-time attendance record for the museum and subsequently traveled to the Guggenheim Bilbao (Spaun) and to the new Guggenheim Museum in Las Vegas. For this work, Falco shared an award from the U.S. Chapter of the Association Internationale des Critiques d’Art with fellow co-curator Ultan Guilfoyle, Guggenheim director Thomas Krens, and architect Frank Gehry. Recently, Falco and artist David Hockney discovered optical evidence that paunters in the early Renaussance used optical projections as auds in their work several hundred years earlier than historians had previously realized had even been possible. This work has been reported in newspapers and magazines around the world, including a documentary on BBC and a segment on the CBS news program “60 Minutes.” Falco can be reached by e-maul at falco@u.arizona.edu.
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Falco, C.M. The Art and Materials Science of 190-mph Superbikes. MRS Bulletin 28, 512–516 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1557/mrs2003.148
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1557/mrs2003.148