It’s the Summer time and you head out to your car after a long day at work only to find the car is scorching hot. After a day of being berated by bosses, yelled at by clients and having your computer systems shut down to a highly frustrating level this is really the last thing you need. Once inside your car the windows have to be rolled down until your air conditioner can cool the car off and if you start to head out you feel like you need to stick your head out the window like a dog with its tongue out.
Why hasn’t anyone solved the problem of the hot car? Certainly a sunshade in the windows to reflect the UV rays and help keep some of the heat out of a car, but with most cars the paint soaks up the UV rays and heats up the car. Not only do UV rays cause a car to heat up but it also leads to the corrosion of the paint job on a car which starts to deteriorate the overall look of a car. If we had a paint that would keep this from happening wouldn’t it be helpful in other industries as well?
The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab has created a paint that uses glass in the mixture in order to protect your paint job from the UV rays that can damage it. This pain is made of silica and potassium silicate and it dries within a few hours to create that durable surface coating that will keep a paint job looking great for a long time. This mixture allows the UV rays to bounce off so there is no absorption of the solar radiation; in fact the surface of a vehicle is actually cool to the touch instead of being heated up.
Not only are you able to enjoy a cool surface, but the heat that is absorbed will not end up inside your vehicle when this paint is applied. The overall use and application of this paint is actually widespread with possibilities. Originally this paint was developed to paint naval ships in order to protect the metal surfaces. This paint will spray on and adhere to any metal surface to keep it cool and protect it from the harmful UV rays, which makes it perfect for use on vehicles and make the right for protecting the surface of vehicles.
Other applications the team from Johns Hopkins see as possibilities for this paint is on bleachers, playground equipment, farm equipment and anything else that is metal and needs to be painted. Imagine a small child going down a hot metal slide that burnt their legs on this scorching surface, now with this pain this child will be able to enjoy a cool surface that is enjoyable and is actually protected. This awesome paint is expected to last nearly 100 years. This means your now cool car that is painted with this new glass based paint will have a finish that might last longer than you do.