# rmx-s-chem-tech: If you've ever blown up a balloon or pulled at a pair of pantyhose ...

<< If you've ever blown up a balloon or pulled at a pair of pantyhose, you may have noticed that the more the material stretches, the more transparent it becomes. It's a simple enough observation: the thinner a material, the more light shines through >>

<< For buildings and windows that automatically react to light, you don't have to spend as much on heating and air conditioning (..) The problem is, these materials are too expensive to produce for every window in a building. Our idea was to look for a simpler and cheaper way to let through more or less light, by stretching a very simple material: a transparent polymer that is readily available >>

http://news.mit.edu/2016/tune-polymer-material-transparency-smart-windows-0122

Francisco López Jiménez, Shanmugam Kumar and Pedro Miguel Reis. Soft Color Composites with Tunable Optical Transmittance. 21 Jan 2016. DOI: 10.1002/adom.201500617

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adom.201500617/abstract