a blog by the NSF Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology
Are you looking for the summer research program that will give you the experience you need to consider a career in nanotechnology? Are you interested in chemistry AND sustainability? If so, the Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURE) might be for you! To give you insight into the program, we made a …
Happy National Nanotechnology Day! The National Nanotechnology Initiative chose October 9 (10/9) for this festival of all things nano in honor of the nanoscale, which is 10-9. In other words, a nanometer equals 0.000000001 meter! This year at Sustainable Nano we are mostly celebrating over on Twitter, but we hope you'll also enjoy this collection …
Continue reading "#NationalNanoDay Linkfest"
It’s hard to turn down an opportunity to share how cool nanoscience is with the public, and especially with children. Back in February, a group of CSN affiliated women hosted an activity at the Science Museum of Minnesota for their Women in Science and Engineering Day. As members of the Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology, we …
Continue reading "Life is S’more Fun with Nanoscience"
This post was co-authored by Arielle Mensch & Yi Cui We recently received a very intriguing question from a 12-year old reader, Olivia, who asked, “How do scientists figure out the texture of cells?” This is a great question, and like most great questions, the answer is a bit complicated! Scientists have a variety of …
Continue reading "How do scientists determine the texture of cells?"
What exactly is "sustainable nanotechnology?" Even after over 200 Sustainable Nano blog posts, the answer to that question might not seem obvious! Fortunately, we have two new videos to share that do a great job explaining the mission of the Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology (CSN). First, here's a brand new 3-minute video introducing our Center: The other video …
Continue reading "New Sustainable Nanotechnology Videos!"
Happy New Year, everyone! 2016 was a very busy year for Sustainable Nano and the Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology. Researchers in the Center had nine papers published in scientific journals and have a number of others already submitted for review (you can see a running list of our publications here, including links to many public-friendly blog posts explaining the …
Continue reading "2016: Sustainable Nano Year in Review"
Fluorescence is a favorite topic here at Sustainable Nano - we've written about quantum dots, fluorescein in the Chicago River, glowing bacteria, and many other topics, but one of our most popular blog posts of all time is about how highlighters and blacklights work. Well, now our colleagues at ACS Reactions have made two amazing new videos …
Continue reading "Fluorescence is Awesome: New CSN Videos!"
Last month we posted "Light Can Do Way More Than Bend: Part 2," in which we talked about using lasers to create a particular type of metamaterial from gold nanoparticles. One exciting application for metamaterials research is the development of invisibility technology, and now the ACS Reactions team has produced a great little video explaining …
Continue reading "Invisibility Cloaks & Tomato Juice – Two Videos About Light & Color"
This post is part of our occasional "How is that sustainable?" series. You can see our previous post on paper vs. plastic here. This spring, New York City banned the use of expanded polystyrene (EPS) food and beverage containers, effective July 1. (EPS is often colloquially called styrofoam, after DOW's trademarked brand.) Although EPS is technically a recyclable …
Continue reading "Why Don’t We Recycle Styrofoam? – Speaking of Chemistry video"
Here at Sustainable Nano, we've published several posts talking about the instrumentation used by researchers in the Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology to visualize nanoparticles and cell membranes, such as atomic force microscopy and super-resolution fluorescence microscopy. For this week's post, we're sharing a video produced by the American Chemical Society's Reactions series, called "How Can You See an Atom?" The …
Continue reading "How Can You See an Atom? – ACS Reactions Video"
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