Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Accelerated aging gets even faster

How 63x for an acceleration factor? My first thought was that the material would cook 63 times faster (i.e., ALL thermoplastics including the highest temperature polyimides that only exist in the patent world would be reduced to a ball of charred goo comparable to a roasted Peep) , but given that the mirrors avoid reflecting IR and longer visible wavelengths, maybe not. I've talked in the past of the dangers of over-acceleration and if that isn't a real possibility to you here, then it never will be. But this still could be a useful test. I'd just be sure to runs some slower accelerations at the same time to be sure that there is a correlation to point to.