Wood-colored may soon lose its meaning if scientists from the University of Maryland, College Park, manage to apply a new technique to the key byproduct of the trees of our world. In a nifty new process, a group of researchers have managed to strip away wood’s distinctive, well, wooden colors, and instead made it transparent. It takes just two steps (complicated as they may be) to turn a block of wood into what looks a lot like a block of plastic, and scientists are pretty thrilled about the implications of this new procedure.

So how did they do it? Dr. Liangbing Hu, a materials scientist at the Unviersity of Maryland, and his team took a block of wood and boiled it in water, sodium hydroxide, and a few additional chemicals for around two hours in order to remove the organix substance lignin, which is responsible for wood’s distinctive coloring. Then, the team poured epoxy atop the newly transparent block, making it four to six times stronger than before.

Because wood is both stronger and boasts better insulating capabilities than glass, and is more environmentally friendly than plastic, the see-through version could be used to make windows, tables, and much more.

“We were very surprised by how transparent it could go,” Hu told the New York Times. “This can really open applications that can potentially replace glass and some optical material.”

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By Lulu Chang

Source: Yahoo