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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."
Honeycombs Big?
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?
Yes, it is. The nifty part is the SIZE of the arrangement. If you bothered to read the article, you would notice that the hexagon pattern is in a very unusual size range.
Or is it some techincal term?
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?"
Almost good enough spelling for Digg.
AT&ROFLMAO
This doesn't seem any more unusual than a crystal lattice.
Its just doing it in another molecule.
I'm with the GP, its not earth shattering.
liqbase
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.
We keep telling ourselves, that SIZE isn't important....
Give a hand, not a hand-out.
...by Post Cereal.
This is pretty cool stuff. Makes me wonder how exactly it works (IANAC). Suppose you set up the lattice and then dropped a new molecule right in the middle of an existing pore. Presumably it would be attracted to one of the edges, but what then? Does the whole lattice get rearranged as the new molecule is shuffled into place? Where does the energy come from for all of that?
Way more interesting than a salt crystal, btw.
...following the principles of Heisenburger's Uncertain Cat...
They left the experiment a little to close to a potatoe. (All members of the nightshade family have a missing vowel in their outer shell.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
"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.
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.
Your right and I agree completely. If you look at the shape this is only this is not complex in the least. Many materials do this. Is so common I wondered at first why it was news. Then I saw the scale.
There are a lot more degrees of freedom in this system than in a hexagon with only 1 molecul per side. What would happen if we added 1% of another molecule? Could you engeneer it to only fit in certain locations and modify say, ever third? The starting of a gate-drain-source arranegment?
OK there's a lot of what ifs there but the potentional pay off is huge. These structres are built at the same time all over the surface. If it could be manufactored it would scale amazingly.
I researched in this field and now I work in it. This stuff is 20+ years out but its a simple modifable molecule like anthraquinone that's going to kick start true nanotech.
Stop the presses, armchair chemist poo-poos academic research. Slashdotter to be consulted before all new federal grants.
XML causes global warming.
I am pretty sure that I wasn't the only one who knew the correct spelling, but didn't notice the mistake.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
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.