Core77

Never mind Google Chrome, let's look at the real stuff.

American designers' love affair with chrome has certainly cooled a bit since the 1950s, but it's still the go-to material when you want to express high-quality plumbing or mechano-fetishism. (Sorry, don't know if that's really a word, I suspect I just made it up.)

But designers who spec out chrome, and who know what goes into making it, might feel a tinge of guilt; the electroplating process required to produce the stuff uses awful chemicals that make for some hazardous waste that can poison groundwater when it's dumped.

Luckily M.I.T. researcher Dr. Christopher Schuh has recently developed a chemically different variation of chrome, sexily named nanocrystalline nickel-tungsten alloy, that gives the shine and the toughness without the environmentally-deadly byproducts. The material is currently being tested out as (what else) truck bumpers, and if it proves to be as tough as its forebear, you'll one day be washing your hands from a tap made out of the stuff.

In other chrome news, here's a picture of a tasteful chrome Mercedes from that bastion of subtlety, Dubai:

via the economist, jalopnik