Everything is made of atoms. So to make anything, you need to start off with atoms. Usually a lot of atoms. A whole lot of atoms. What is the smallest thing that you can see with just your eyes? Maybe a grain of salt. Well ... Read More...
Things at the nanoscale are a little different. Think about your room at home. If you dont work at putting stuff away, things become a mess. At the nanoscale sometimes things arrange themselves without you having to do anything. This is a process ... Read More...
In the last 20 years, scientists and engineers have created machines to sequence DNA, which lets them read it much like you read a book, except it’s too hard to read your DNA from front to back in one long stretch. So the DNA is ... Read More...
DNA is really thin, about two nanometers across and cells can fold and pack DNA into a cell which is about ten micrometers across. DNA also doesn’t like to be stretched out and would rather fold up. We know something about DNA folding up, the ... Read More...
Seeing, it’s one of our five senses, and it is kind of important for getting around. Almost all animals have some kind of ability to see, with hawks and eagles having the best vision and rats having some of the worse. And then there ... Read More...
Don Eigler joined IBM in 1986 after completing his post-doctoral work at Bell Labs and getting his Ph.D. in physics at the University of California, San Diego (while surfing in his spare time). In his free moments these days, Don enjoys classic science fiction, backpacking ... Read More...
Tell us a bit about your background I was born in Panama and moved to the United States about 8 years ago. I come from a family of engineers and science and math lovers. I was always taught that the possibilities are endless, so I ... Read More...
Catherine grew up in Ohio, went to Oberlin College, and then recieved a Ph.D. from Cornell University. After spending some time doing research in Sweden, she returned to Oberlin College and is currently teaching chemistry there. She studies the materials used in historic organ pipe ... Read More...
Daniel Soto was born and raised in Texas. After finishing high school at LBJ Science Academy in Austin, TX, he went to Stanford University in California. He earned his B.S. in Electrical Engineering in 1994. He then spent several years working as an engineer at ... Read More...
Seth Darling is a scientist at the Argonne National Laboratory, a large national laboratory outside of Chicago. He is a materials chemist, and much of his work relates to nanoscale processes related to solar energy. When you were a kid, what interested you about science? I wanted ... Read More...
Aaron Strickland is a chemist studying Nanotechnology. At the time of this interview, Aaron Strickland was a postdoctoral research associate and National Science Foundation Discovery Corps Fellow at Cornell University. He is now Vice President of Research and Development at iFyber, a small company in ... 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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
