You know when your apartment is full of cockroaches, so you try everything possible to murder them, including using that disgusting sticky gel that goes in the cracks of your cupboards, but then you end up getting it all over your hands and dishware as you try to plug up the crevices?
No, just me? Fine. Anyway, Japanese scientists are solving my problem, and the solution is called dry glue.
Dry glue works like this: It comes in small balls of liquid latex coated in calcium carbonate nanoparticles. Calcium carbonate is the same stuff that makes up chalk, marble and the calcium supplements you can buy at the corner store. It is extremely dry and doesn't let air flow through it easily, so it is perfect for the job of trapping the moisture inside of the glue, rather than exposing it to the air around it (which, as any kindergartener will tell you, completely ruins your glue).
Smash these suckers, and out comes the glue, as wet as the kind you get in your Elmer's bottle. The genius of this is that it can be placed in tiny crevices (like the edges of my cupboards) and then, when pressure is applied, the glue is essentially activated. This could be a boon for manufacturing and assembly. Imagine fixing a broken leg on your coffee table by simply placing some dry glue beads in the crack and then pressing the two broken ends together. Voila, glue is activated and your hands are clean.
According to Gizmodo, the creators say the glue is stronger than other pressure-activated glues (think Post-It notes), so it could be used for tons of applications, though similar "microencapsulated epoxies" (resins with a powder coating) have been available for some time. Presumably, the new invention will be easier to work with. New Scientist notes that the glue will likely be used for hard-to-reach parts of cars and smartphones.
The new glue was announced in research published in the journal Materials Horizons. You can see a video demonstration of the glue in action, courtesy of New Scientist, here.
