Foam

Well into his 70s, Terry Martin could be found most days in his Dana Point workshop sanding blocks of polyurethane foam into precision-shaped surfboards. With his big white beard and barrel chest, Martin looked like Santa riding out a blizzard of swirling white dust. Over a nearly six-decade career, Martin is said to have shaped more surfboards than anyone - some 80,000 - although the exact number is unknowable. Martin himself once said he stopped counting after 50,000. Martin's output and perfectionism made him an icon among the tight-knit fraternity of surfing's best shapers, one of a dwindling number of craftsmen who earn a living making surfboards by hand.

Bubbles are a serious business. While they're beloved as a childhood pastime and a bathtub luxury, the physics behind the delicate, iridescent clusters remains remarkably complex. Now mathematicians have pinned down the ephemeral physical processes that mark the life, and death, of these suds. Their findings, published this week in the journal Science, could prove useful to chemical engineers seeking to better understand all kinds of foams, from shaving cream to plastic insulation.

Bubbles are a serious business. While they're beloved as a childhood pastime and a bathtub luxury, the physics behind the delicate, iridescent clusters remains remarkably complex. Now mathematicians have pinned down the ephemeral physical processes that mark the life, and death, of these suds. Their findings, published this week in the journal Science, could prove useful to chemical engineers seeking to better understand all kinds of foams, from shaving cream to plastic insulation.

William Haines Designs, the company that carries on the design legacy of the legendary Hollywood decorator-to-the-stars, fittingly chose Oscar season to bring back a classic: the Avalon.  The 1950 Billy Haines chair and bench designs are being reissued this month with some 2013 tweaks. Whereas the original Avalon chairs were painted with oil enamel, production manager Greg Bianchini said, the reissues will be zinc-plated and powder-coated for weather resistance. Modern, fast-drying foam has replaced 1950s foam rubber that eventually hardened or disintegrated.

A light-brown foam that blanketed Santa Monica Bay beaches for more than a month--prompting scores of complaints to local officials--has disappeared, local lifeguards said. The unsightly foam, which looked like dirty laundry suds, was caused by a large plankton bloom, marine biologists and botanists said. The bloom caused a massive discharge of protein, which created foam when it came in contact with the air, and eventually was deposited on local beaches by waves, they said.

Several foam manufacturers have agreed to pay $30 million to settle lawsuits brought by survivors and family members of those who died in a 2003 fire at a rock concert in Rhode Island that killed 100 people and hurt more than 200. The settlement offers were disclosed in court papers filed Monday. More than $101 million has now been offered to victims of the Feb. 20, 2003, fire at the Station nightclub in West Warwick from several companies, including Home Depot and a maker of fireworks.

Los Angeles City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter Wednesday proposed a citywide ban on foam packaging used by the food industry, and the elimination of at least half of other non-biodegradable food packing materials. Saying the lack of landfills in the city has created crisis conditions, Galanter pushed for a one-year voluntary reduction on the use of polystyrene foam used to insulate food. Under the terms of Galanter's motion, a mandatory ban on the material would follow the voluntary reduction.

Thousands of gallons of firefighting foam were accidentally released Thursday in a Long Beach airport hangar, covering a police helicopter and other vehicles with fizzy bubbles. A technician inadvertently set off the firefighting system, and minutes later the hangar was filled to the ceiling with foam, Long Beach Fire Battalion Chief Frank Hayes said.

Mike Wiltshire, dragging a bundle of hoses across a sweltering roof, explains some basics: Move smoothly, maintain your equipment; a heavy wind is your worst enemy. He is enveloped in a paper-thin safety suit, dark glasses, a baseball hat and crusty tennis shoes wrapped in duct tape. The outside temperature is approaching 100 degrees. He lowers his spray gun into firing position and squeezes the trigger. A chemical batter hisses out, rising like a pancake on a hot skillet when it hits the roof.

The decline of my 10-year-old refrigerator started with an unsettling wheezing sound and ended with a death rattle that would have cost $500 to fix. So I, like 10 million other Americans each year, dropped money on a new fridge and had the broken one hauled away. But I was nagged by a lingering concern: What happened to my hulking old Amana? The Pacific Sales where I bought my new Samsung offered a free haul-away service, but what did that company do with it? Where, exactly, was it hauled away to?

Lunch items in the Los Angeles Unified School District have been in flux in recent years - for example, swapping pizza for whole-grain spaghetti - but the sagging plastic foam tray that carried the food survived for decades. That changed too earlier this month, when the foam was switched out for recyclable paper trays at all district schools. District and city leaders made it official during a Thursday lunch-hour announcement at Thomas Starr King Middle School in Los Feliz, where two years ago the activism of some sixth-graders kicked off the effort to ban plastic foam trays.

Well into his 70s, Terry Martin could be found most days in his Dana Point workshop sanding blocks of polyurethane foam into precision-shaped surfboards. With his big white beard and barrel chest, Martin looked like Santa riding out a blizzard of swirling white dust. Over a nearly six-decade career, Martin is said to have shaped more surfboards than anyone - some 80,000 - although the exact number is unknowable. Martin himself once said he stopped counting after 50,000. Martin's output and perfectionism made him an icon among the tight-knit fraternity of surfing's best shapers, one of a dwindling number of craftsmen who earn a living making surfboards by hand.

Coastal cities can't keep plastic foam out of the ocean by themselves. The tiny bits of polystyrene from food takeout containers float from inland areas through storm water channels along with the rest of the urban runoff. So it's heartening that legislation to ban most use of such containers managed to pass the state Senate in July despite strong opposition. The bill (SB 568) faces a more formidable hurdle in the Assembly Appropriations Committee, but it's been improved with provisions that allow a slower phase-out of the foam, and it should be passed.

Reporting from Sacramento -- Restaurants in California would have to stop using food containers made of polystyrene foam under legislation approved Thursday by the state Senate to address environmental worries. Lawmakers also moved forward with tougher penalties for those who smuggle or possess cellphones in state prisons and expanded a state ban on workplace smoking. Sen. Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach) proposed the prohibition on polystyrene containers, saying they do not decompose quickly and thus can linger for years in landfills, storm drains and ocean waters.

The rap on polystyrene foam — better known by the trade name Styrofoam — used to be that it hung around in landfills without decomposing and couldn't be recycled. But these days, practically nothing breaks down in landfills because they are regularly compacted and covered. And the foam now can be recycled in dozens of California cities, though many of them offer only limited service. So has the foam cup become an upstanding citizen in a more green-conscious world? Not quite. It's been fingered as one of the major culprits, along with plastic carryout bags, of plastic pollution in the oceans and other waters.

When Gordon "Grubby" Clark said this month that he was going out of business, fear rippled through the surf industry. In a blink, the main source of surfboard blanks -- the polyurethane foam cores that big producers and individual artisans alike shape into finished boards -- had disappeared. And Harold Walker, at 73, had finally gotten lucky. The telephones at his Wilmington company, Walker Foam Inc., went crazy as surfboard makers scrambled to replenish their supplies.

Crocs were born of the economic boom. The colorful foam clogs appeared in 2002, just as the country was recovering from a recession. Brash and bright, they were a cheap investment (about $30) that felt good and promised to last forever. Former President George W. Bush wore them. Aerosmith lead singer Steven Tyler wore them. Your grandma wore them. They were mocked by the fashion world, but 100 million pairs were sold in seven years.

It is the "signature wound" of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars: traumatic brain injury from the blast of the enemy's improvised explosive devices. Now two researchers say that minor changes in the military's combat helmet could reduce the incidence and severity of these injuries. Using complex computer modeling to determine the impact of such blasts on helmets, physicist Willy Moss and mechanical engineer Michael King of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Northern California concluded that soldiers and Marines would be better protected by wearing a slightly larger helmet with 1/8 inch more foam padding.

First the Republicans took over the House. Now it's the cafeterias. Republicans say the use of "compostable" cups and utensils, a key part of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's Green the Capitol initiative, was "neither cost-effective nor energy-efficient. " So they brought back plastic utensils and foam cups, ditching the eco-friendly dining wares of the Democratic era. The replacement spoons, knives, forks and cups are creating quite a stir, dividing lawmakers largely along party lines.