Renaissance Potters Were Nanotechnologists

Posted by Hemos on Monday June 30, 2003 @04:12AM from the the-first-ones-around dept.

Roland Piquepaille writes "In this article, Nature says that "tiny metal particles give 15th century Italian ceramics lustre." Nature adds that iridescent glazes -- changing colour when viewed from different perspectives -- were achieved by using "particles of copper and silver of between 5 and 100 billionths of a metre across." And the story becomes even more interesting. Nanotechnology meets alchemy! "The ability to change colour was regarded as an alchemical property, making iridescence magic too." Read this summary for more details. And for more information, you can read the abstract of this research paper, "Copper in glazes of Renaissance luster pottery: Nanoparticles, ions, and local environment," published by the Journal of Applied Physics."

1 of 145 comments (clear)

Decopauge! The 1970's Nanotech revival! by deanj · 2003-06-30 04:18 · Score: 2, Troll

Next they'll be saying the Decopauge is the 1970s technology revival of those potters from way back when.

This article is a biiiiiiig stretch; sounds like someone read an article about nano-tech somewhere and decided that just because they found some dust someplace it's related....geesh.