Where does this come from, and can I check it?

Stephanie Kwolek's 1965 aramid solution spun into fibres five times stronger than steel by weight. The figure is taken from National Inventors Hall of Fame, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.

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Yes. It sits on the Technology shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.

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The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.

Mondo Knows Facts

Kevlar came out of a search for lighter tyres

Stephanie Kwolek's 1965 aramid solution spun into fibres five times stronger than steel by weight Kwolek was looking for a fibre to reinforce radial tyres when she produced a liquid crystalline polymer solution that behaved unusually in the spinneret. The rigid rod-like molecules line up along the fibre axis, which is why the fibre carries load so well. DuPont sold it from 1971, and it went into body armour, boat hulls and brake linings. It sits in Mondo's technology collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.

Where this comes from

National Inventors Hall of Fame

Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.

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Tags: materials, fibres, chemistry

Kevlar came out of a search for lighter tyres: the short answers

Where does this come from, and can I check it?: Stephanie Kwolek's 1965 aramid solution spun into fibres five times stronger than steel by weight. The figure is taken from National Inventors Hall of Fame, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
Is this really a technology fact?: Yes. It sits on the Technology shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
What else can I read about it?: The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.