3D Nano Wineglass Created By NEC

Capt. Mondo writes: "Just found this press release on NEC's Web site featuring a wine glass with a diameter of 2,750 nanometers. Normally this sort of thing would make me think it's some silly holiday-themed publicity stunt for nanotech -- like the world's smallest ad placed on a bee for guinnessworldrecords.com -- but the fact that NEC is claiming to have a new process for creating nano-sized objects in 3D (with the "glass" being the result) makes this a bit more interesting. Apparently the new process uses an ion beam with a diameter of 10nm, a gas containing the base material for construction and good ol' CAD. "

Comments

I'm going to invest in NEC now.

[OverKill|DV]

Everyone run out and invest in NEC, with products like this, how could they fail?!

Re:Why?

[smack_attack]

remember those little people from Gulliver's Travel's? You just breathed one in.

glass vs mug?

[Alien54]

Well, a wine glas is symmetrical, while a beer mug is not.

which is just as well, since we want to be cultivating a proper sense of culture among the microbes, no?

[ducks, then runs away ...]

Re:News for Nerds??

[tswinzig]

If this were really news for nerds, you'd be talking about a nano beer mug.

Yeah, like real nerds drink alcohol... something that damages brain cells... puhleeze...

just for completeness! [SI prefixes; chemistry!]

[j3z_]

The SI prefixes (from NIST) are:

yocto (10e-24)
zepto (10e-21)
atto (10e-18)
femto (10e-15)
pico (10e-12)
nano (10e-09)
micro (10e-06)
milli (10e-03)
[unity] (10e+00)
kilo (10e+03)
mega (10e+06)
giga (10e+09)
tera (10e+12)
peta (10e+15)
exa (10e+18)
zetta (10e+21)
yotta (10e+24)

The length of a typical bond between two atoms is about one Ångstrom -- 10e-10 metre, or a tenth of a nanometer -- so the first few prefixes probably won't come up much in conversation [yet?].

(for completeness, there are binary versions of these prefixes too :-)

And on the subject of nano-things... let's not let the CAD-crazed physicists with their molecular beams and Atomic Force Microscopes push the fascination of supramolecular chemistry off the stage. Have a look at the Stoddart and Rebek groups' pages. Also see KevinMS' comment!

You're right, man...

[karzan]

They really should have done a nanoscopic water bong.

Re:Wineglass?

[kaoshin]

Thats not a wineglass. It's a grail. They are showing thier faith.

Re:Depends how you define "nanometer"

[Cyclopatra]

Not to mention that apparently normal wineglasses are > 1/2 meter tall.

researchers built the glass from carbon with an external diameter of only 2,750 nanometers (nm),approximately 200,000 times smaller than a normal sized glass.

Now, admittedly I'm doing this on my cell phone's calculator, but:

2,750 * 200,000 = 5.5 x 10^8 nm (for a standard wineglass)

5.5 x 10^8 nm / 1 x 10^9 nm/meter = .55 meters

That's a lot of wine...

-Cyclopatra

the world's smallest ad?

[G Neric]

how can they call that the world's smallest ad? it's written on the leg of a bee... check this IBM logo out, it's much smaller (35 atoms!) and it was done some 10 years ago. and featured in Slashdot before.

Re:Depends how you define "nanometer"

[wocky]

1 nm is indeed 10^-9 m, so the article is wrong there, but the article also says the glass is 200,000 times smaller than a normal glass, and that it's ~2700 nm. Those are consistent, so probably only the article's definition of nm (and micron) are incorrect.

Re:Why a wine glass?

[Wah]

the teapot wouldn't render and making a beer-mug that small would have defied all logic.
--

Why?

[autocracy]

Ok, what's the point of this whole Nano stuff anyway? I mean, who would WANT a nano wine glass anyway?

Person 1: "How am I supposed to drink this? I can't even see it!"
Person 2: "It's 200 proof - you can taste it."
Person 1: "But what if I drink the glass too?"
Person 2: "Don't worry, you'd never know it anyway."
Person 1: "Well that's comforting..."

Want good Xmas music? Look for Manheim Steamroller!

Re:Why?

[GenetixSW]

You miss the point. It's not a question of "why do we do it?", but rather one of "can we do it?"

Humanity has always tried making new things for the sake of making new things. It is part of our inherent nature. Almost all of scientific progress is made through trial and error, along with "can we do it?" episodes such as this.

We went to the Moon so we could say we had gone there. Now we're aiming for Mars. Who cares if it doesn't *immediately* benefit us? Some day it will. When we get to Mars we'll be asking ourselves why we didn't do it sooner.

Nanotechnology has many, many possible applications, from medicine to disaster clean-ups. Choosing a wine glass was just one way of showing it *is* possible to do that. Of course, it would take billions of these things to intoxicate anyone, but intoxication was never the point.

It was necessary to start somewhere, so they chose to start there. I applaud them for getting this far!

Re:Depends how you define "nanometer"

[Cyclopatra]

hey, I was already cutting them slack by using the *right* definition of a nanometer :P By their figures, the average wineglass is 20 ft. tall!

-Cyclopatra

Re:Wineglass?

[Wah]

Unfortuntely their numbers have continued to dwindle, once it became public knowledge that they abstain from "gettin' it on on a regular basis." :)
--

obligatory commercial immitation

[matija]

One nanosized wineglass: $120 000
Micromaniuplators for handling it: $50 000
A bottle of very fine Wine: $100
The look on the policeman's face when he reads your blood alcohol level after you tell him you had "10 glasses of wine": priceless

News for Nerds??

[Mononoke]

If this were really news for nerds, you'd be talking about a nano beer mug.

--

Re:Depends how you define "nanometer"

[wocky]

Give 'em a little slop; it's the right order of magnitude. You've heard of a yard of ale, yes :-)?

Depends how you define "nanometer"

[IntelliTubbie]

The press release says that "one nanometer is one-millionth of a meter." But isn't 1 nm = 10^-9 m = 1 billionth of a meter? It also says that a micron is "one-thousandth of a meter," which I thought was a millimeter.

Re:how small is this?

[Cyclopatra]

2,750 nm = 2.75 microns. Transistors on your PIV chip - around 200 nm. So it's about 10x bigger than that - about 1/40 the width of a human hair, given the comparisons I've heard. Kind of hard to put up a reference object that's going to be recognizable.

-Cyclopatra