Can Scotch tape record information like audio tape?
Back in the olden days of the previous millennium, long before the digital revolution compressed entire albums and even movies into ultra-high-fidelity files that users could download in seconds, hundreds of millions of people relied on physical tape to store albums on cassettes (or 8-tracks) and video on low-resolution VHS cassettes.
But what if sticky tape – not audio or video tape – were a viable recording medium, too?
“There has long been an interest in developing devices that don’t need electricity and don’t have the same vulnerabilities as electronic computers,” says Nathan Keim, a professor of Physics at Pennsylvania State University.
In a New Journal of Physicspaper, he and co-authors explore the soft matter physics of storing and retrieving mechanical imprints following rearrangement or distortion. For instance, how can partially peeling and reapplying everyday sticky tape mechanically store retrievable information? In other words, how can sticky tape function...
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