Researchers Create Ultrastretchable Wires Using Liquid Metal

When they ditched mercury thermometers due to toxicity / envrionmental hazards, the replacement is galinstan - gallium, indium, and tin. So it is considerably less toxic.

Unfortunately it wets to glass, unlike mercury which beads up, and is more expensive.
The way around that is to coat the glass with something - I don't recall what now, but I think it was some gallium compound.

On the more expensive front - I'd think both gallium and indium are a couple orders of magnitude more expensive than copper, so don't count on that going away any time soon. (Not to mention copper itself is 'expensive' [~$5/kg, it varies], and manufacturers are cheaping out on it. 12 AWG booster cables?! What kind of sick joke is that?)

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/lXrmIxZz4AA/story01.htm

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