Happy Saturday everyone. I've been awol for a little while as I was traveling for the holidays and have had a busy week trying to assemble data for a hopeful scientific publication. I'm also kinda down on this website as a whole but still love and gather support from GUS. I will start by making an admission that when visiting my family I couldn't get through the weekend without a couple smoking slip-ups. I can proudly say though that I haven't fallen off the wagon since and my desire to smoke again has not risen.
I know I've done a couple element of the day diaries so far but I'm not very inspired to write about a specific element today and thought I'd talk briefly about one of the most confusing and sometimes misused words in science, nano. Follow me bellow!
So I'm sure you've all heard the term nano used in the context of "nano-technology" or "nano-science" etc. The term nano is an abbreviation of the unit of length called the nanometer. A nanometer is very very short, in fact one nanometer is 0.000000001 meters long (one billion nanometers make up one meter). A molecule of carbon dioxide is roughly one half of a nanometer in length to give you an idea of the scale. Science prefaced by the term nano usually deals with things 100 nanometers (nm for short) or smaller. What's confusing is that so many things can fall into the category of being "nano" I can't even wrap my head around it. Basically "nano" is just a cool sounding word that researchers use to sell their science in grant proposals or for sci-fi movie writers. Just to get the nomenclature out of the way, "nanotechnology" refers to the study and development of functional materials that are nano sized while "nanoscience" generally refers to the study of the synthesis and properties of things nano sized. I know the distinction might not sound like much but I feel it is an important distinction. Check out this fun song
So as I was saying many things can be called nano, even biological things like proteins and DNA. I would say most nano materials fall into one of two categories:
1)Really big molecules(DNA is one)that are either of biological origin or synthetic origin like the field of supramolecular chemistry. I was fortunate to see a lecture given by one of the giants in this field, Sir. Fraser Stoddard, earlier this year in which he talked about his research into nano-capsules for localized disease treatments. He was even featured on ABC news for this work.
Another big figure in the field of nano molecules for the use in futuristic nano computing is James Tour at Rice university. He is a rather polarizing figure as he makes some exaggerated claims and has publicly opposed Darwinian evolution (he's a right leaning christian). It drives me nuts that his opinions would carry any weight because he's not a biologist.
2)The other general category I would say is that of familiar materials that when cut down to nano-sizes exhibit different properties than they do in the bulk phase. One classic example is gold and silver. Gold for example has a yellowish hue in bulk but nano-sized chunks of gold are actually Red and its these particles that have historically been used to give red stained glass their color. Silver nano-particles are used to give the yellow color in stained glass. Surprisingly (and alarmingly) some Samsung washing machines were using silver nano-particles in their cleaning process. Another hot-topic is nano-sized semiconductors called quantum dots. These little buggers have brilliant optical properties such as fluorescence that make them useful for many different applications. Also famous in this category are carbon allotropes nano-tubes and nano-spheres like buckminsterfullerene.
I will openly admit that as a chemist I'm terribly sick of the word nano but I hope this diary has been informative on the topic. I have to go get new glasses today so I will be popping in and out to answer questions. Cheers to another smoke free day everyone!
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