Friday, July 02, 2010

In Discover Magazine This Month: 20 Things You Didn't Know about Nanotechnologoy

In the July-August issue of Discover Magazine:

1 Get small. A nanometer is about the width of a strand of DNA; if you design, build, or use functional systems smaller than 100 of these, you’re a nanotechnologist.

2 By that definition, we have been doing nanotech for centuries. For instance, the colors in medieval stained glass windows result from nanocrystals created in the heating and cooling of the glass.
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3 Size matters. At the nano scale, materials take on unusual properties. Their color, transparency, and melting point often differ significantly from those of larger clumps of the same stuff.

See "things" 4-20.