a blog by the NSF Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology
As we come to the end of Black History Month for 2022, I find myself contemplating the banner that hangs year-round in front of Noyes Chemistry Lab to celebrate one of the shining stars of my own department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC): St. Elmo Brady. Dr. Brady was the first African-American …
Did you know that 2019 is the International Year of the Periodic Table? We chemists in the Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology are happy to celebrate this all year long! A particularly delicious example of the Periodic Table (image from the Science History Institute) The periodic table as we know it was first published 150 years …
Continue reading "Celebrating the 150th Anniversary of the Periodic Table: Nano-Style!"
Have you ever made lightning in a pickle? I have. It involves putting two iron nails in a pickle and applying 110 volts of electricity. Itās pretty smelly, but it is worth it to see what looks like yellow-orange lightning in the pickle. Whatās going on? The principle of āput in electricity ā get out …
Continue reading "Electrocuting a Pickle: Demonstrating Major Concepts in Science"
Two years ago, I wrote a blog post calledĀ Two Ways to Make Nanoparticles, describing the difference betweenĀ top-downĀ andĀ bottom-upĀ methods for making nanoparticles.Ā In the post I commented,Ā "we can estimate, knowing how gold atoms pack into crystals, that there are about 2000 gold atoms in one 4 nm diameter gold nanoparticle."Ā Recently, a Sustainable NanoĀ reader wrote in to ask about …
Continue reading "How can you calculate how many atoms are in a nanoparticle?"
A couple of weeks ago I was fortunate enough to go the Hanse Institute for Advanced Study (āHWKā) in Delmenhorst, Germany, for a round-table discussion called āFinding Common Ground: Interdisciplinary Teaching of Climate Change and Energy Research and Policy Decision Making.ā The HWK is a beautiful facility that hosts small conferences and has apartments for …
Continue reading "Nanotechnology and Climate Change: Finding Connections"
Last month, I was featured on The Academic Minute, a segment produced by radio station WAMC in the northeastern US. The Academic Minute presents 300-word essays by professors and academics around the world explaining research topics for a non-specialist audience. In my case, that topic was gold nanotechnology. This opportunity arose when I received an …
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Science and engineering topics appear in many movies ā think of the gadgets in the James Bond series. Star Trek, Star Wars, and other long-standing science fiction series, of course, are full of futuristic transportation, infrastructure, devices and weapons. The word ānanotechnologyā was coined in 1974 by Norio Taniguchi1, and it began appearing in …
Continue reading "Nano in the Movies"
In Marco's previous post, you can read how making nanoparticles is like baking ā different proportions of ingredients and different processing conditions (time and temperature) can turn your batter into a pancake, bread, a biscuit, etc.Ā But how do you come up with recipes to make nanoparticles in the first place? In general, as I …
Continue reading "Two Ways to Make Nanoparticles"
Everything is made of atoms. Usually these atoms are strongly connected to one another, in an amazing variety of configurations. But atoms are so tiny, how can we possibly understand the structure of matter at the atomic level? You probably have seen pictures of molecules or materials, zoomed in to the atomic level, which show …
Continue reading "The Atomic Difference Between Diamonds and Graphite"
What inspires people to do science? Perhaps you, Dear Reader, are interested in understanding how the physical world works.Ā Maybe you saw a rainbow, or ocean waves on the beach, when you were a kid, and therefore have a love for optics, physics, or oceanography. Human-made objects can also inspire scientists.Ā Quite a few people …
Continue reading "Art as Inspiration for Science"
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