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Camera Flashes Kill Nanotubes

Posted by Hemos on from the smile-pretty-mr.-carbon-KA-WHAM dept.

Fnordmonger writes "New Scientist is running a story claiming that flash photography can cause nanotubes to explode. Basically , the carbon absorbs heat, which cannot be dissipated. Instead, the energy is released in an explosion. There is a cool video there of the stuff going off."

5 of 209 comments (clear)

  1. Fusion? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If the tubes are loaded with deuterium & tritium, of He-3, could this be useful for small scale fusion?

  2. Read the article, thanks! by manual_overide · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Firstly, only the single sided tubes exhibit this behavior. So building things out of multiple sided tubes is still viable. Next, they absorb the light of the flash because they are black, but can't dissipate the heat out fast enough when there are a number of them bunched together because the heat from one nanotube gets absorbed by another, and so on. Think of it like dissipation interference.

    --
    If bad puns were like deli meat, this would be the wurst
    1. Re:Read the article, thanks! by darkonc · · Score: 3, Interesting
      The article claims that the popping sound is the oxygen being forced out of the tubes. To quote: "The initial popping noise is generated by the heating of the oxygen inside and between the tubes, which causes a shock wave.

      As to knowing that it's a slow burn: I watched the video (my new version of mplayer works quite nicely, thank you).

      Given the longer description in the body of the article, I'm not sure where the 'explosion' tag comes from (other than journalistic hyperbole).

      --
      Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
  3. Re:Ouch, hope NASA knows this by cat_jesus · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Or how about simple everyday lightning?

  4. forgetting... by Caineach · · Score: 2, Interesting

    what you all seem to be forgetting about the article is that is says only single walled nanotubes that are bunched up together will explode. if you take a picture of nanotubes on their own, they wont. so you still can use singlewalled nanotubes in stuff, just not when they're buched up