14/01/2019
''There's plenty of room at the bottom.''
Lets circle back to some fundamental concepts of nanotechnology and what makes it special.
It’s hard to imagine just how small nanotechnology is. One nanometer is a billionth of a meter.
Here are a few illustrative examples:
There are 10,000,000 nanometers in 1 centimeter.
A sheet of newspaper is about 100,000 nanometers thick.
On a comparative scale, if a marble were a nanometer, then one meter would be the size of the Earth.
Tired of reading...? Watch the video! 🧐📖
Nanoscience and nanotechnology involve the ability to see and to control individual atoms and molecules. Everything on Earth is made up of atoms—the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the buildings and houses we live in, and our own bodies.
But something as small as an atom is impossible to see with the naked eye. In fact, it’s impossible to see with the microscopes typically used in science classes. The microscopes needed to see things at the nanoscale were invented relatively recently—about 30 years ago.
Although modern nanoscience and nanotechnology are quite new, nanoscale materials were used for centuries. Alternate-sized gold and silver particles created colors in the stained glass windows of medieval churches hundreds of years ago. The artists back then just didn’t know that the process they used to create these beautiful works of art actually led to changes in the composition of the materials they were working with.
Today's scientists and engineers are finding a wide variety of ways to deliberately make materials at the nanoscale to take advantage of their enhanced properties such as higher strength, lighter weight, increased control of light spectrum, and greater chemical reactivity than their larger-scale counterparts. And that's exactly what we do at PLiN Nanotechnology. Making nanotechnology accessible for everyone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAOFpgocfrg
A short introduction to nanotechnology, and why you should care about it. The video dives into materials science and advanced materials, and looks at how des...