How tough is the new £5 note?
The UK's new £5 bank note - made of polymer rather than paper - gets the "chemistry treatment". Lots of raw footage: https://youtu.be/KUjh_z1A_RQ Featuring Professor Sir Martyn Poliakoff and...
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- The Bank of England is issuing new bank notes, beginning with the £5 note.And they're made of plastic, and there've been all sorts of advertisements that you can't break them.I felt immediately: challengedand I had the idea, if we froze it with liquid nitrogen...the strands of the polymer would be frozen rigid...and you may be able to break it— hitting it with a hammer.So I gave Neil several of my own £5 notes—you can't spend university money on things like this—and he had great pleasure trying to break the professor's bank notes.And it worked!He managed to smash one, but it took several attempts.You had to get the orientation just right and hit it just in the right way,and then it broke into two or three pieces.Unfort...
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- The Bank of England is issuing new bank notes, beginning with the £5 note.And they're made of plastic, and there've been all sorts of advertisements that you can't break them.I felt immediately: challengedand I had the idea, if we froze it with liquid nitrogen...the strands of the polymer would be frozen rigid...and you may be able to break it— hitting it with a hammer.So I gave Neil several of my own £5 notes—you can't spend university money on things like this—and he had great pleasure trying to break the professor's bank notes.And it worked!He managed to smash one, but it took several attempts.You had to get the orientation just right and hit it just in the right way,and then it broke into two or three pieces.Unfort...
