Bone-Chilling: A Cast That Cools Itself
The sun blazes, but the cast on your arm stays cool. The secret lies in a thin coating made from recycled animal bones.
Typical cooling surfaces are often rigid and brittle: you can't stick them onto a curved bandage. Here, they took a commercial fiberglass cast that hardens quickly and added two polymer layers. Inside are ceramic particles of calcium pyrophosphate derived from bone waste.