Week8_AlexsaGimenez

Nanotechnology 

nano- Greek for dwarf
When listening to lectures what I found so interesting is how small a nanometer is. I didn't personally really know the scale so learning about this was interesting. I think the craziest to me was that a tennis ball is 10^8. That number is so large and a tennis ball is such a small ball that any hand can hold. It makes me wonder how many nanometers is a waterpolo ball which I play with every day.




Further. learning how as we go smaller into the nanoscale the laws of physic can change and quantum effects dominate. This demonstrates how nanoscale is so important because it isn't like other skills that you can just think about with physics but rather need to take special attention to quantum effects for example. 

It was also interesting learning that if one were to bring two atoms together if they go well together they form a chemical bond, a stable bond. Then with a scanning tunneling microscope we could bring the atom very close to another atom and we could tune a chemical bond, making a partial chemical bond. I didn't really know that one could manipulate a chemical bond, I thought it was just natural formation of chemicals.







 1. Rothemund, P. (n.d.). DNA folding, in detail. TED. https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_rothemund_dna_folding_in_detail?language=en 

2. Kurzweil, R. (n.d.). A university for the coming singularity. TED. https://www.ted.com/talks/ray_kurzweil_a_university_for_the_coming_singularity?language=en 

3. Public Broadcasting Service. (n.d.). Making stuff. PBS. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/series/making-stuff/#making-stuff-smaller 

4. Lecture Nanotech for Artist Part 1 - Dr. Gimzewski 

5. Lecture Nanotech for Artist Part 2 - Dr. Gimzewski

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