Allotropic Material

Allotropic material can be defined as a material that has take on a variety of different forms despite being made up of the same element. The best example of this is carbon which has 8 Allotropic states, which are;

a) Diamond

b) Graphite

c) Lonsdaleite

d) C60 (Buckminsterfullerene / buckyball)

e) C540

f) C70

g) Amorphous Carbon

h) singe walled carbon nanotube or buckytube

This ability for a material such as carbon to be both, in one form can be the hardest material know to man and in another be soft enough to be used as a writing implement is something that greatly interested me and was a idea that I based the basic forms of our flat pack system around. A flat pack system is similar to carbon atoms in that they are all very similar to take advantage of economies of scale, however, depending on the needs of the occupants the geometries and structure of the system should be able to change to suit. One of the draw backs of taking this property of carbon and directly applying it to a flat pack system is that while it its structure is flexible it is limited to very basic physical problems such as resisting gravity and spatial considerations. There isn't much in the allotripic theory that dictates how the materials respond to unique situations such as site and culture, which is understandable because of its minute scale. Because of this a flat pack system cannot be purely allotropic, it also needs to be evolutionary and become more complex as the needs of the users become more elaborate.