How Nantotechnology Works
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| Audience/Grade: | College Freshman-Continuing Education |
| Discipline(s): |
Materials Engineering Nanotechnology |
| Special Topic(s): | |
| Learning Resource Type: |
Community - Blog |
| Media Type: |
Unknown |
| Author(s): |
Organization:howstuffworks |
| Description: | Tutorial on nanotechnology in How Stuff Works. It starts with the future of Nanotechnology and then works backwards to current research. "In the world of "Star Trek," machines called replicators can produce practically any physical object, from weapons to a steaming cup of Earl Grey tea. Long considered to be exclusively the product of science fiction, today some people believe replicators are a very real possibility. They call it molecular manufacturing, and if it ever does become a reality, it could drastically change the world. Atoms and molecules stick together because they have complementary shapes that lock together, or charges that attract. Just like with magnets, a positively charged atom will stick to a negatively charged atom. As millions of these atoms are pieced together by nanomachines, a specific product will begin to take shape. The goal of molecular manufacturing is to manipulate atoms individually and place them in a pattern to produce a desired structure. The first step would be to develop nanoscopic machines, called assemblers, that scientists can program to manipulate atoms and molecules at will. Rice University Professor Richard Smalley points out that it would take a single nanoscopic machine millions of years to assemble a meaningful amount of material. In order for molecular manufacturing to be practical, you would need trillions of assemblers working together simultaneously. Eric Drexler believes that assemblers could first replicate themselves, building other assemblers. Each generation would build another, resulting in exponential growth until there are enough assemblers to produce objects ." |
| Rating: | No Rating |
| Related Resources | |
| Keywords: | nanotechnology nanoscale |
| Version Info | |
| Publication Date: | September 2008 |
| Platform/Format: |
WWW |
| Cost: |
Free |
| Download URL: | http://www.mahoningjvs.k12.oh.us/bpa/banks/more%20info%204.htm |
| Metadata: |
IEEE LOM Record |
| Collection: |
NEEDS
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