Nice analogy =P

I'm tempted to improve that Wiki article on power-law fluids when I have a moment, so that it's more readily understood by those who haven't already learned the majority of what it's trying to explain...

Heh, glad I put that disclaimer there. Stopping force is proportional to velocity, (technically shear rate), in a Newtonian fluid such as water or oil: in a shear-thickening fluid viscosity is proportional to velocity. Viscosity is the proportionality constant linking speed and stopping force, so I guess that makes stopping force proportional to the square of the speed.

For more info, try these.

I guess there's a limit to the amount of shock it can absorb. I would imagine its properties have been tweaked so that it stops any impact within its own thickness. Obviously if the impacting object is travelling faster, that results in more rapid deceleration and thus more forces transferred to the delicate internally-bits of your laptop. For dropping off a table though, it probably provides the smallest possible deceleration force against the floor, compared to protection materials currently on the market.

My suspicion would be that rather than rather than causing the linear deceleration of a simple spring constant, (like most other foams, rubbers, etc.), it provides an exponential deceleration: the stopping force in a shear-thickening fluid is proportional to the speed rather than the displacement. This means that the material starts acting from the very moment of impact, as that is the point with the highest speed. A spring, (or foam, or rubber, or anything else that acts like a spring), would do essentially nothing until the impact has squeezed it enough to get a decent counter-force out of it. But by that time it might be too late, and the spring might have already bottomed out. I'd be interested to see some numbers for this gel, to back up the stuff I've just written!
 
/Disclaimer: Mechanical engineering undergraduate. Don't have my qualification yet; take above post with a pinch of salt.

Of course, whether you get to do any is another matter.

Even more unfortunately, some of them came back.

Surely Google couldn't switch Youtube to Ogg even if it wanted to, since Flash doesn't support it. If it does support it now then I'm uninformed and please disregard this post :P

Chodeaphone? What?

If you're going to alter a company's name for ironic effect, at least do it in a way that makes sense. Personally I find it immature and annoying, and wish people wouldn't do it at all.

and begins muttering rosaries, as the unit detects I'm hitting 90 mph.

That's only 2 mph after it suddenly stops displaying any roads, informing you that where you're going you don't need them.

From TFS:
> The plates create as much as 30 kWh of energy as cars drive over them.

It's strongly implied. An if it isn't per car, is it per day? Per year? Assuming the "238 thousand" figure calc'd by Fractoid, it could be per month... maybe.

Sounds like a veger to me!

Good god, I really hope you're joking. If not that's a horrible inferiority complex you have there.

Anybody can look good. *Anybody.* If you work at it it will pay off, and I can assure you it's worth it. Put the effort in. You will reap the rewards 100-fold.