NANO TUBE
2/23/11
Have you ever seen dew closely? It has a round top and its base firmly stuck to the bottom. This is cause by self-assembly. Self-assembly applies to our cells too. In one cell, 100 billion molecules can fit inside it. Cells make their own unique structure. Bucky tube (nano tube/Buckminster fullerene), is assembly of 60 carbon molecules. When the assembly is done, it first looks like a soccer ball. It also looks like architecture, made by Buckminster fuller, the American architect. That is why nano tubes are also known as Buckminster fullerene or Bucky tube. When this Bucky tube is stretched into a tube, you call it a nano tube. How easy is that?
Nano tube is the 3rd-carbon-molecule-ever-found. The first one is diamond and the second one is black lead of a pencil. Bucky ball was found in 1985 by Professor Richard Smalley from Princeton University. He got a Noble Prize for it. Bucky tube was found in 1991 by a Japanese material scientist. It was found in sooty blotch by an electron microscope.
There are a lot of facts about Bucky tube that are amazing and advantageous. To name few, Bucky tube is one nanometer. That is, 1 over 1,000,000,000 meter. So if you compare a piece of your hair and a Bucky tube, the nano tube is 100,000 times smaller than the hair. However, if the nano tube was combined and used as a rope, the tensile force is 100 times bigger than iron. Bucky tube can also transport electricity faster than copper and heats up faster than a diamond. If 10 Bucky tubes are combined as a rope, it can control electronic current like semiconductor, which means that it can replace silicon! Bucky tube can minimize electron gun of a screen of PC or TV. Famous home appliances companies are being competitive in selling flat screen TV, using nano tube.
However, the best part didn’t come yet. It is the outer-space elevator. The outer-space elevator was first introduced to the public in 1930, by a Russian engineer. Unfortunately, he couldn’t really capture anyone’s interest. It actually got interest from the public by the number one sci-fi author, Arthur C. Clarke. He wrote a book called ‘The Fountains of Paradise’ in 1979. It talks about space elevators about how 30,005,800km above the earth and we can place a satellite and connect it to the earth and space elevator it is. NASA has been giving out papers and papers about how it is possible. Nevertheless, there are many shout outs about how this whole idea is impossible. For instance, we will need some kind of substance that is 30 times stronger than iron. NASA did say that there is the nano tube that is more than 60 times stronger, but this is not the only problem. Speed of elevator might burst the eardrums out and harsh climates are something that we just cannot control.
I believe that just a bit of more work on nano tubes will allow us to step further into the better world.
No comments:
Post a Comment