The wispy metal strip in my hands is 8 inches long, 1 inch wide, and as thin as aluminum foil.
“Try to tear it,” says William Johnson, a materials science professor at Caltech in Pasadena.
I pull—first gently, but soon with all my might. No go.
“See if you can cut this,” suggests Johnson’s postgraduate assistant Jason Kang, handing me a mirror-bright piece of the same metal. It’s an inch long, a quarter inch wide, and thinner than a dime. I bear down with a heavy-duty pair of wire cutters. The metal will not cut. I try again, squeezing with both hands until my fingers ache. Nothing.
But the most amazing act in this show is yet to come.
“Watch,” says Johnson. From a height of about two feet, he drops a steel ball onto a brick-size chunk of the metal. The ball bounces so high and for so long—1 ...
