SAN ANTONIO, Texas--Lawbreakers may soon have a harder time giving the slip to police officers and military forces. A laboratory here has concocted a new type of spray-on slime that makes the ground slipperier than a banana peel.
Developed for the U.S. Marines, the slime is a milky-white gel designed to be sprayed in the path of fleeing criminals and enemy soldiers. Once on the ground, the gel forms a thin coating that reduces friction to almost zero. Friction is a force that opposes motion and enables walkers and runners to get a good grip on the ground. Volunteers who tried strolling across a lawn sprayed with the gel quickly landed on their rumps. A driver trying to cross the lawn in a van spun swiftly out of control.
Bill Mallow, one of the chemists at the Southwest Research Institute who invented the slime, said it is composed of water and a top-secret polymer that is similar to the material that soft contact lenses are made of. A polymer is a chemical compound with large molecules that contain many small molecules linked together in a long chain. Plastics and rubber are two common polymers.
The slime remains effective for 6 to 12 hours, alter which it dries up and can be swept away. The U.S. military and police departments could be using it as early as next year.
"People ask us if they can get some for their kids' birthday parties," researcher Ronald Mathis told Fox News. "But this is not like a Slip 'n Slide."
"If you put one loot on it, you're going to go down," he added, "and you're going down fast."
Find the word or words that best complete each sentence. Write the words in the blanks.
1. Friction is a force that opposes --.
2. A polygon has -- or more straight sides.
3. -- is a disease that fuses together all the bones in the face so that the head and face don't grow properly.
4. Plastics and rubber are two common --.
5. A magnetic -- is a region around a magnet in which the magnet exerts a force.
6. -- is a dark-colored, fine-grained rock that forms from lava spewed by a volcano.
7. The orbital frontal cortex is a region of the brain that is situated behind the --.
8. A positron emission tomography scanner examines the body using -- chemicals.
9. -- is the waves of muscle contractions that move food down the human intestines.
10. A python is a --, a type of snake that wraps around prey and squeezes them to death.
1. motion, 2. three, 3. Apert's syndrome, 4. polymers, 5. field, 6. Basalt, 7. eye sockets 8. radioactive, 9. Peristalsis, 10. constrictor
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