It broke. :-( Anyway, my real question is whether the lessons learned from catastrophic failures of materials and structures can be put to positive use. Jim On Friday, August 5, 2016, Allan Wechsler <acwacw@gmail.com> wrote:

Did the crown break, or just fall off? If it just fell off, getting it glued back is a five-minute job, and your dentist can probably do it on a walk-in basis between appointments. They make those adhesives in many grades, and your dentist will just use the next stronger one.

On Fri, Aug 5, 2016 at 10:29 AM, James Propp <jamespropp@gmail.com <javascript:;>> wrote:

...

Is it possible to design materials so that they'll fall apart (or change state in other useful ways) when stimulated by vibrations of a particular frequency?

I just had a temporary crown put on one of my teeth. The dentist used a weak adhesive (so that he'd be able to remove it a couple of weeks from now when the real crown is available), and the crown just broke (I'm guessing that the weak adhesive that he used was at least as much a factor as the scone I crunched).

Could there be a stronger adhesive that loses its adhesive virtue when you make it vibrate it just so? (Might dentists if the future say "Don't sing any loud B-flats for the next two weeks"?)

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