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Killing Friction: Nanotube Springs And Bearings
leb writes: "Physicists at U.C Berkeley have 'peeled the tips off
carbon nanotubes to make seemingly frictionless bearings so small that some 10,000
would stretch across the diameter of a human hair.
The minuscule bearings are actually telescoping nanotubes with
the inner tube spinning about its long axis. When sliding in and
out, however, they act as nanosprings.
Both the springs and bearings, which appear to move with no
wear and tear, could be important components of the microscopic
and eventually nanoscale machines under development around
the world.' Based on the principles of Vander Waal's forces this breakthrough, they state that, 'Our results demonstrate that multiwall carbon nanotubes hold great promise for
nanomechanical or nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS) applications,' they conclude in
their paper. 'Low-friction, low-wear nanobearings and nanosprings are essential ingredients
in general NEMS technologies.' Read the news release and visit the lab Web page."
Guess what?
You couldn't make steel at a reasonable price for train rails in 1840. Sure, it would have made railroad tracks able to carry more weight and wear far longer, but it just couldn't be made at a reasonable price for train rails. Then a guy named Bessemer came along with a new way of making steel, and by 1870 steel was more cost-effective than iron for train rails.
Sos how are we going to get nano down to a reasonable price? Good question, and if I knew, I'd have already patented it.
Steven E. Ehrbar
psst... van der Waal's
See that "Preview" button?
(forget who said this)
Sometimes you get something useful from it, but, that's not why we're doing it.
Also, If you know what your doing, or what you're going to get, it's not research.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
I think the point is that the tubes can rotate around one another, without contact, due to the fact that we're at a molecular level. THere are molecular forces, Vand-der Waals forces or whatever, but essentially, they won't 'wear'.
Yes
...who, in a completely unexpected return to topic, is gennerally considered father of nanotechnology.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
It won't change. Robotics has reduced the cost of building products, but we haven't often seen those reduced costs passed along to the public. No, instead it goes to increased corporate profits and executive bonuses. Nanaotechnology will mean that things will cost the same, but with 24 year old corporate vice presidents getting billion dollar bonuses. And the creation of an underclass of unemployables who used to work machines to build things.
Imagine Flint, Michigan...everywhere.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
Anything titled "MOD THIS UP" should inherantly not be modded up, so says me, the quasi-philosopher engineer. So ha!
There is a difference between "pure" science and practical science. Both have their place. However, calling those that practice practical or applied sciences engineers exclusively and NOT scientists is a disservice.
American Heritage Dictionary calls a scientist, "A person having expert knowledge of one or more sciences, especially a natural or physical science." But perhaps semantics is not the correct fight here - rather it is perspective.
Some philosophers wouldn't like your characterization. Some philosophers speak out AGAINST science.
Sometimes, fringe engineers, in addition to implementing ideas, also invent things that are unique. There is a big difference between having some great though and actually working out how to make it work.
Saying that someone who invents, creates, experiments, and discovers is not a "true" scientist is doing them a disservice. Does that mean that anyone who works in a laboratory is not a true scientist? Anyone who does an experiment? Who uses the scientific method?
In other words, scientists are only those who sit around and think all day.
Hmm.
I find it fascinating that on the nano-scale all fundamental engineering principles must be revisited. Basically, physics doesn't necessarily work the same way on the nano-scale!
It's a bit ironic that, in this world of massively accelerating computer development, we are going back to our roots in mechanical engineering to solve the problems of the future.
That's my point. Edison was not a scientist. He did no fundamental research on ANYTHING. He took modern scientific theories and ideas and applied them, _making things_ with them. The same goes for Westinghouse and Babbage.
You included Tesla. Tesla was in it for the money, but he didn't have his mind much on science. He, too, did little more than tinker with gadgets and come up with theories on why his things worked.
It's funny that you say 3-legged chair. A three legged chair would be perfectly stable, even if all the legs are of different lengths. Now, where the center of gravity is when you sit on this chair may make the difference between falling and sitting, but a 3 legged chair can be absolutely stable. It's gauranteed not to wobble. Ever.
Anyway, science is a philosophy as much as, say, Plato's world of form. He had no real reasoning method..he started with his own, personal, basic assumptions and carried them out to their logical conclusions, just like pure science. Think of all the famous ancient Greek philosophers. Chances are, a good many of them are scientists - Aristotle? Socrates? Xeno? They all did quite a bit of basic scientific work.
You are missing the distinction between science and engineering. All the people you named were essentially engineers. The fact that they were in it for the money both has nothing to do with this and proves that they weren't scientists.
Scientists aren't out to make money on something. Show me an astronomer or theroetical physicist who's in it for the money. Hawking? Penrose? I don't think so. But....some guys running a biotech firm? Nuclear physicists? These guys build nanobots and reactors that are used in submarines. They're in it for the money, even if they are "doing good science."
That does NOT make the scientsits.
scientist \Sci"en*tist\, n. One learned in science; a scientific investigator; one devoted to scientific study
engineer n 1: a person who uses scientific knowledge to solve practical problems
That's right from dictionary.com. A scientist seeks truth and knowledge by experimentation. An engineer seeks money, fame, or something else by creating things to perform certain tasks.
Einstein never made a damn thing worth noting. Neither did Bell, or Faraday, or Hawking, or anyone else (yes, I am biased toward physics). Scientists are few and far between, just as are philosophers. Engineers are quite common - we even have schools devoted to nothing but training them, a la my very own RPI. They're very well paid, too.
Science != engineering. Show me someone who has come up with a new way of looking at the world, oran important basic theory just for the hell of it, and I will show you someone who _thinks_ and doesn't make pretty little gadgets trying to get rich, like Edison.
No no. Thinking is part of it, but just like Newton, Bohr, and all the rest of them, experimenting and observing is an integral part of science. See my reply to the post below to kinda see more of my distinction between scientists (Bell, Hawking) and engineers/inventors (Edison, Babbage).
Philosophers do often speak out against science, and for good reason. Their basic assumptions are generally without any basis whatsoever. I classify a scientist as someone who does basic research for its own sake, not to make money off of it by creating some machine. An engineer may do good science, but he is not a scientist. An experiment designed to reveal something the world to the experimenter is a trait of a good scientist. An experiment designed to find out whether something will work or is feasible practically is a trait of a good engineer.
Hey, isn't it in the right direction where science is heading? In a few years, we will have all these nanobots in our arteries and veins, cleaning our cholesterol levels and fighting viruses. Now who needs the human genome project huh?
Now that you mention it, thinking about Civ all the fscking time is really getting to be not very good for my health...
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
Fun Fun Fun, Get your new cars, and toys, and computers, and fans all at super high prices and super low size. Yes eveyrthing you see here is made from NANOTECHNOLOGY which ihenables us to make everything super smaall, with super high prices. Get a million of these fans, to fit in 1 inch, only 2 mil for it. Or have a robot that can do super complex tasks.. like BUILD ATOMS this and that is part of everything you can do with NANOTECHNOLOGY ...
seriously, it's pretty cool, just it sounds really expensive, how are you going to get a fan out of this for a reasonable price :)?
The greatest scientists in history - Newton, Galileo, Bohr, Einstein, etc. - have _all_ been scientist philosophers, not engineers. It is the engineers' job to try and adapt what we know about the world through pure scientific research to practical applications.
It is the job of the true scientist to constantly evaluate how we think about the world and what we know about it. Pure science is nothing more than another school of philosophy - the sophists believe what they did, Kant believed in the impracticality of pure reason, and Bohr believed that it was impossible to fully understand the world through any amount of research. It is a system of beliefs based on reason, just like any other modern philosophy.
The above poster is absolutely right - people expect scientists to make their world better by doing practical research. The people who give us new advances in technology are called engineers - lasers, microwaves, washing machines, and transistors were created by engineers. However, every one of these engineers turned some seemingly useless, impractical research done by some scientist somewhere into something practical and useful.
Bottom line, science != engineering.
Science and philosophy are in the same realm - engineering does not belong there.
You're looking at this in the wrong way. You should really reconsider how you think about science. It's much closer to the etherial realms of philosophy than the practical realms of engineering. In fact, when you boil it all down, science is mearly a way of thinking. It it science's ability to rationally comtemplate and understand the world that allows others to take the understanding that science has brought and apply it to practical, material gains. In fact, if it wasn't for simple, purely scientific research like this, engineers probably wouldn't have gotten the human race out of the hunt and gather phase.
So, if you don't enjoy science, why not try turning to other methods of thought. Occultism is ready and waiting for you.
(Side note, I'm not meaning to put down occultism, I'm simply saying that the scientific thought process is much more likely to lend results that can be used towards practical applications.)
--
Feminism is the wild notion that women are human beings.
Imagine a computer on a touch-sensitive piece of paper you could fold up and stick in your pocket...
I wonder if they're going to get that fast talking guy to be in the commericals, like with the old Micro Machines.
Your reality is lies and balderdash and I'm delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever. - Baron Munchausen
If you are interested then there is more info on the general ideas of nanotechnology at the foresight institute's web site. In particular Engines of Creation - the book that started the whole thing - is online there, and might be worth a read/skim if you are interested. It is a bit dated though, but it is amusing when he mentions this wonderful new idea called "hypertext".
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They also have a book that gives more of a "what it means" or "what would it be like" viewpoint here
The announcement in this story is obviously a long way off being what is described in the books, but even if what is described never comes to pass it is still an interesting read.
This time they got the components to move by attaching the tip of their scanning microscope to the inner bearning and simply pulling it out and pushing it in. I guess if you can logde a few condictive metal atomss inside the inner bearing you can do the same with electromagnetical forces. And then you can have computer controlled frictionless nano motion after working out quite a few complicated details.
Of those to whom much is given, much is required.
It is true that researchers--both pure and applied, "scientists" and "engineers"--sometimes present their discoveries so dryly and with so many qualifications that you can't be sure exactly what the heck they've actually done or what it might conceivably be useful for. In this case what they've done is basic and essential to nanotechnology, and it's important to get past the "so what?" reflex. (For a quick intro on the basics of molecular nanotechnology, take a look at http://www.zyvex.com/nano/)
Consider what they've demonstrated here: nano-scale springs and linear bearings. Presumably these bearings will also work rotationally, but that hasn't been tested yet, so I'll concentrate on the former. If you want to move molecules around one at a time with enough positional accuracy that you can place individual molecules where you want them to chemical react with other specific molecules--and no others--then you must position your molecule to within about 1/10th nanometer of the desired position.
In the face of thermal vibrations--and thermal vibrations dominate at this scale, not quantum mechanical effects--you must have a very stiff positioner to do this. Buckytubes are among the stiffest known structures, so it's very useful that we can make linear bearings and springs from them. If a way can be found to attach the ends of these telescoping buckytubes to spherical joints and, further, to provide a means to actuate them, then it would be possible to combine a minimum of six such telescoping tubes into a nano-scale Stewart platform.
A Stewart platform is a parallel linkage resembling a space frame of connected variable-length struts. The linkages form an octahedron in which one triangular face is the "platform" and the opposing triangular face is the "base." By varying the lengths of each strut, the position and orientation of the platform with respect to the base will vary in six degrees of freedom (translation in X,Y, and Z, and rotation in pitch, roll, and yaw). Stewart platforms are much stiffer than ordinary serial linkages (what we normally think of when we talk about robot arms), and thus they are commonly used for flight motion simulators. (Check here http://www.zyvex.com/nanotech/6dof.html for more details.)
OK, now you may rightly say, "So what?" again. Being able to build Stewart platforms from buckytubes means that we can then make robotic nanosystems conceptually capable of assembling anything else given the proper raw materials, energy, and software. And that means they can assemble copies of themselves, replicating exponentially. Even if it costs a billion dollars to build the first one,it takes just a few generations before the cost of each assembler/replicator drops to the cost of the raw materials, and since carbon atoms are plentiful and cheap, that cost can be very, very low.
To get all the details, consult Drexler's Nanosystems: molecular machinery, manufacturing, and computation, http://www.zyvex.com/nanotech/nanosystems.html