Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What Is Glitter?

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 117 posts

Re: What Is Glitter?

#61

Post by uryga »

lucb1e wrote: post #52

I'm curious what the answer to the title is but "aluminum metalized polyethylene terephthalate" doesn't exactly help me. Aluminium, okay, but what is the rest? The article goes on and on and on, rambling about how everyone likes it just like we once hunted for honey, what company it originated at, what kind of word it even is... thousands of words for a couple of interesting bits of information. This either needs a s…

i felt like the article describes a whole bunch of the details – e.g. covering the plastic with vaporized aluminum (i believe this is what "aluminum-metalized polyethylene terephthalate" means); making plastic iridescent by etching microscopic patterns into the plastic and exploiting the way light refracts off of those; maybe others that i can't remember now.

but to me that wasn't as interesting as the part where the glitter industry turned out to be weirdly secretive about the whole process.

Re: What Is Glitter?

#62

Post by [deleted] »

mjlee wrote: post #45
cf498 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love how one of the most up voted answers boiled down to "the military" https://old.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/a8hrk0... >defense department would be extremely secretive >And they very much wouldn't care about the environmental impact >A few hundred tons of glitter is significantly less bad than thousands of tons of agent orange and dioxin. >And depleted uranium

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaff_(countermeasure) I guess it's possible chaff is made by Glitterex.

[deleted]

Re: What Is Glitter?

#63

Post by robertAngst »

I'll say it-

The US Military

And not because its particularly useful, but as a method to funnel money from taxpayers into a few glitter companies. They play along and everyone makes money.

This passes the- "Why is it a Secret", "Why it can be a secret", and "Why they buy so much".

Re: What Is Glitter?

#64

Post by code_duck »

kingbirdy wrote: post #37
code_duck wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the answer was given in the article as Revlon. Nail polish, eyeshadow, lipstick, blush... all can contain micro glitter particles. I wonder, what is the total surface area painted by cosmetics each year?

That's hardly secretive or unexpected, though - everyone knows cosmetics contain glitter

Whatever the product may be, it sparkles, so it can’t be much of a secret.

Re: What Is Glitter?

#65

Post by riskable »

peter303 wrote: post #60

Previously they used pulverized mica. Mylar is cheaper and more manageable.

"Previously"? Mica powder is still used in a lot of glitter products. For example, glitter make-up is almost always made with mica powder. 3D printing filament with "glitter flake" is mica powder.

Re: What Is Glitter?

#66

Post by starbeast »

A highly effective tactical weapon in our long standing battle against the sea and everything that lives there. That damn sea, one of our oldest enemies and yet it still persists. We'll get the better of it yet though, the big wet bastard. Glitter production will help enormously and I am delighted to say it has almost doubled since our recent glitter marketing through social media and that article in the New York Times.

edit - Some people actually like the sea and dare to speak against our mighty and patriotic glitter industry - https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/11/glitter-plastics...

Re: What Is Glitter?

#67

Post by bobthepanda »

anigbrowl wrote: post #54
pjc50 wrote: post #23

> I have no idea how humans figured out how to do that, or why it occurred to them to even try, but it sounds expensive. I had to check this wasn't Dave Barry writing. Anyway, this seems to have genuinely been a space age invetion, aluminised mylar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BoPET (There is no item of "futuristic clothing" that pins a piece of visual SF to a particular point in history in the 1960s quite like thi…

This made sense in theory, but how could aluminum go from being not on the film to being on the film without at least some Scotch tape? “They evaporate aluminum and deposit it on it,” said Mr. Shetty. This made sense in theory, but how could aluminum be evaporated? “It’s a very, very thin layer. They put it in a vacuum chamber, then evaporate the aluminum,” said Mr. Shetty. “With heat,” his son added. “What are they…

Is this a lack of understanding, or a narrative written with a supposed lack of understanding to effectively communicate to a general audience? The type of person reading this is probably not trying to relive a high school science class.

Re: What Is Glitter?

#69

Post by coredog64 »

cf498 wrote: post #41
ohadron wrote: post #18

Here's a huge thread on Reddit trying to figure out which mystery industry is the largest buyer of glitter: https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/a8hrk0... No conclusive results yet, but I believe Reddit will deliver.

I love how one of the most up voted answers boiled down to "the military" https://old.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/a8hrk0... >defense department would be extremely secretive >And they very much wouldn't care about the environmental impact >A few hundred tons of glitter is significantly less bad than thousands of tons of agent orange and dioxin. >And depleted uranium

PSA: Depleted uranium is so-called because it has less radioactivity than the dangerous stuff (U-235).

It's a toxic heavy metal, but it doesn't present any serious radioactivity danger.

Re: What Is Glitter?

#70

Post by dane-pgp »

This question reminds me of an interesting exchange in an episode of Daria:

Ashley-Amber - How do you think they make glitter?

Brittany - Hmm. I don't think we've learned that yet in science.

Salesman - Can I help you, ladies?

Ashley-Amber - Yes. How do they make glitter?

Salesman - Why, they capture a moonbeam and crumble it up into tiny little specks of magic.

Ashley-Amber (to Brittany) - Then we can save a bunch of money by doing it ourselves.

Post reply on HN