Nature is used as a source of inspiration for a lot of nanometer-scale things that we make. Scientists will examine something in nature, figure out how it works and then try to make something similar. The idea is that a zillion years of evolution has ... Read More...
Cotton is one of those materials that everyone takes for granted. What's nano about that? Scientists from Eindoven University (in the Netherlands) have treated cotton with a special polymer that makes the cotton magical. At room temperature the polymer-treated cotton will hold 340% of its ... Read More...
Some materials just hate water. They are known as hydrophobic. Superhydrophobic means they really hate water. Now there is a new class of materials that really hate everything. These are superomniphobic. Scientists at the University of Michigan have made a material ... Read More...
Cotton is one of those materials that everyone takes for granted. What's nano about that? Scientists from Eindoven University (in the Netherlands) have treated cotton with a special polymer that makes the cotton magical. At room temperature the polymer-treated cotton will hold 340% of ... Read More...
Tomorrow is Valentine's day and just in time is the "world's tiniest" cupid. Cupid is the little guy who flies around and shoots arrows into folks and makes them fall in love. Now scientists at Brigham Young University have made a tiny cupid out ... Read More...
Color is all about the wavelength of light that comes off an object. A chemical, a pigment called anthocyanin is what makes an apple red. But sometimes an object doesn't have a particular color because of pigment. You can also make something appear to ... Read More...
Like the fashion industry, nanotechnology has the latest hottest material. These days for the fashion industry it might be stretch denim but for nanoscale science and engineering it is graphene, a material that has great potential for a variety of electronic applications. Graphene? sounds like ... Read More...
Lab on a chip, how common. How about lab on a stamp. Scientists at Harvard are experimenting with paper as a material for making tiny sensors. Paper is cheap and it turns out it can do a lot of things like separating different molecules. You've ... Read More...
What is the smallest thing you can think of? an electron, a quark? Well now what is the smallest thing you can make? The answer is complicated but one thing you can say is that the smallest piece of a hard drive is about 10 ... Read More...
Usually if you need to have your blood tested it means going to a doctor's office having some blood drawn and then waiting a while---the blood is sent to a central laboratory and then the results come back in a few days or so. ... Read More...
Smaller is better, if you are a nanotechnologist. So the challenge is to make things smaller and smaller. Sometimes it is useful, other times it is for fun. Like the smallest American flag, or the smallest space ship! Right a space ship. One printed using ... Read More...
Nanotechnology is all about making unique useful materials. Now the worlds lightest material has been recorded. According to these scientists the material a carbon aerogel, if it were the size of a human body it would be less than 0.5 ounces. So light a glob ... Read More...
Science even when it is serious is kind of funny. Looking at things on the nanometer-scale is a problem and requires very powerful microscopes. Some of these microscopes that use electrons instead of light are able to see very small things but also usually ... Read More...
Sometimes it is rocket science and other times it isn't. How to get rid of toxic stuff in the blood? Suck it up using nanosponges. Scientists at the University of California in San Diego have made tiny sponges---so small about 3000 can fit into ... Read More...
Tape, glue, staples. No not a variation on rock, paper, scissors, this is the way that doctors hold things in place in your body. Inspired by those fun loving parasites that attach in your digestive organs and hold on while they eat, scientists at ... Read More...
You can spit water but you can also split water. The splitting of water is important because when you split H2O you get two molecules of hydrogen and one molecule of oxygen. Both are important and hydrogen can be used as a fuel. Unlike solar ... Read More...
