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Molecules Spontaneously Form Honycomb
Science Daily is reporting that University of California Researchers have discovered a new process in which molecules assemble into complex patterns without any outside guidance. From the article: "Spreading anthraquinone, a common and inexpensive chemical, on to a flat copper surface, Greg Pawin, a chemistry graduate student working in the laboratory of Ludwig Bartels, associate professor of chemistry, observed the spontaneous formation of a two-dimensional honeycomb network comprised of anthraquinone molecules."
Typoes in the summary are common enough, but in the title ... and "Honycomb?"
Honeycombs Big?
like ice 9?
Leave some sodium and chlorine together and let the rest of the solution evaporate and you will spot a cubical arrangement of molecules. This concept is new?
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These researchers have taken a big big bite out of ignorance.
On another note, are these honeycombs that much more complicated than the crystalline lattices that form all the time in other substances?
Honycomb? Honycomb? Honycomb? Me want honycomb? I almost fell out of my chair laughing. Last time I checked, it is honeycomb, with an e.
Professor - it's alive!
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
This is really awesome, however carbon spontaneously forms many different shapes, not the least of which are C60, nanotubes, and graphite (which has a honeycomb shape). As cool as this is, what part of this is "news?"
I am failing to grasp the importance of this. Molecules form regular structures? This have been observed for many types of molecules starting from atoms (metals), small molecules (have you heard of ice) and things as huge as ribosomes (itself 100nm).
How's this thing is unqiue? In what aspect?
The answer to this question is probably, huge pores compared to the size of the monomer, but I am still not impressed.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
The next day it formed the words "take me to your leader".
The whole point of fractals is that they follow very simple rules but become very complex. My own particular complex shape is the Bucky ball.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fullerene
Call me when molecules spontaneously form Captain Crunch and we may have a headline.
...by Post Cereal.
This is fucking stupid. You'll see experiments like this in any chemical engineering department at any university. Any M.S. student is capable of this kind of (routine) work.
/. editors with a modicum of scientific knowledge outside of Star Trek and Stephen Hawking books?
How about appointing some
It's called "self-assembly," and google scholar lists a mere 13,800 results for it. People significantly more well-known (George Whitesides, for example) have been doing this sort of chemistry for decades.
And word to the wise: the copper surface could easily be an "outside source". Get some self-assembly in the gas phase and then we're talking spontaneous and impressive.
Sounds like researchers read about snow on wiki : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow
NO outside guidance? Then how did the anthraquinone get on the copper? Someone put it there. That sounds like someone helping the process to me...
Kernel Krunch - Part of a Complete OS
Spontaneous origin of life, perhaps? Simple viruses aren't that complicated.
"Spreading water, an inexpensive and common chemical, on to a flat surface, Dan East, a Slashdot reader with Excellent Karma, observed the spontaneous creation of individual droplets as the molecules self-organized themselves to form larger complex structures."
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
I wonder if I'm signed and numbered.
I am! I am! And with a complex arrangement of particles on the nanoscale to boot.
KFG
The article is overly simplified, and reads like the researchers are blowing their own trumpet. If you have a clean metal surface, pretty much anything will stick to it. This will form a stable layer with a regular structure. Whilst it may be the first time anyone has seen anything that big, I would doubt that it is an entirely new mechanism as they claim.
...a lattice of pentagons.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
(including me, until I did a quick Google search)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=yDZK6H3d5bk
Wow, just wow. I had to read it four times, how about you?
"Sounds good spoken" != "Reads well in print"
This sig rocks the casbah.
Honeycomb big?
no, no, no!
Its very small?
Yea yea yea!
(BRING BACK FUTURAMA!!!)
I'll just give a run down
Since noone has anything intelligent to say
hexagonal shapes in nature form an extremely strong object.
this spontaneous display though pretty may be more important in manufacturing
\so isnt really important to us.
you may be able to purchase this at you hardware store in 10years as a glue or major core function of a construction kit.
.
The whole freakin universe forms spontaneously
http://gravityboy.gootar.com/
Finally! A solution to our growing honey shortage.
>.
If the moderation of the above four comments is any indication, Slashdot is populated by the same demographic which watches Saturday morning cartoons.
Nope. Rather, Slashdot is populated mostly by the same demographic who grew up watching Saturday morning cartoons many, many years ago before they all turned into lame crap.
Could the "spontaneity" of the process be useful in space? As the technology is applied to different materials perhaps as a protective covering? Or a growth medium for "Biological cells and tissue" in zero gravity. Certainly the extremes of temperature ("the surface with the molecules was annealed to spread the molecules. During cool-down to the temperature of liquid nitrogen, the hexagonal pattern emerged.") requiried for this phenomenon would be easily reached (but controlled?) in space.
I'm not too solid on quinone chemistry. Anthraquinone is planar, all the ring molecules are sp2 but appears to have 16 pi electrons (not a Huckel number). Although the oxygen hybridization is a little flexible, I'm guessing the molecule's not aromatic but damned close.
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So does oxidized copper accept a pair of electrons from the anthraquinone or does the metal donate?
"Spreading anthraquinone, a common and inexpensive chemical, on to a flat copper surface, Greg Pawin, a chemistry graduate student working in the laboratory of Ludwig Bartels, associate professor of chemistry, observed the spontaneous formation of a two-dimensional honeycomb network comprised of anthraquinone molecules."
6 Comma's; one butchered, unreadable sentance, and the entire article's like that.
What happened to the days writers used things such as paragraphs, periods, and semicolons, and grammar? Oh wait, I know what happened; Some dipshit decided to try to introduce metered speech, a hypnotism technique, into news articles to make them sound more official. So now we've got poindexter here, managing the pauses in his text so anyone who can speed-read it ends up in a train wreck and anyone who reads it like a 3rd grader ends up thinking it's some great discovery. While the rest of humanity who still has their brains intact, looks at it flat out and thinks to themselves "and the point of reading this is?".
News for nerds my ass.
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
...this result depends on this particular substance. There's no mention of what good this substance is either in general or in the configuration they made it form. So, other than finding yet another of thousands, and like most, good for nothing but a pretty picture, example of physically mediated self-organization, they've found nothing useful, nor proposed any use for it, but got it into Science anyway.
Seven commas. I win.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B