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Generating Nano Oscillatory Motion

KentuckyFC sends us to arxivblog.com, where he summarizes (in prose that is somewhat more twee than we usually encounter in writing about physics) the conversion of a constant force into oscillatory motion on the nano scale. Here is the article preprint. A research group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has made mushroom-shaped nano-pillars that oscillate in a constant DC field, like metronomes.

70 comments

  1. Re:Nano Pillars? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    But you can't listen to Avril Lavigne with concrete

  2. Twee by camperdave · · Score: 3, Informative
    --
    When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
    1. Re:Twee by MontyApollo · · Score: 2, Informative

      The title is "Invasion of the jivin' nano-shrooms" just to give you a taste of the twee.

    2. Re:Twee by Otter · · Score: 1

      All the entries seem to be written that way. It's irritating and not even funny the first time, let alone repeatedly, but the practice of giving cited researchers a Chris Berman-esque nickname is a nice innovation in the world of science journalism. Even if the nicknames are hardly (and I never thought I'd write these words) up to Chris Berman's level of cleverness.

    3. Re:Twee by Ohreally_factor · · Score: 0

      Well, I just learned something. I had thought that "twee" meant gay, and I was wondering why kdawson was being so hypocritical as to call someone else gay.

      --
      It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
    4. Re:Twee by billsf · · Score: 1

      Twee = two. Didn't know it had an English meaning.

    5. Re:Twee by Spy+der+Mann · · Score: 1
      Twee: Nausiatingly cute.

      From TFA:

      Convertin' a constant force into an oscillatin' one is a useful trick. Ya'll seen em:

      Blech. X-(
      :. Q.E.D.
    6. Re:Twee by Hatta · · Score: 2, Funny

      Q: How do you titillate an ocelot?

      A: Ocillate it's tit a lot.

      --
      Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
    7. Re:Twee by Achoi77 · · Score: 1

      *grumble* after reading that I didn't think it was that twee..

      ..to me it felt a little more.. foghorn-leghorn

  3. I was looking for this exact thing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Just the other day, my 3-year-old said: "Dad...my school wants me to generate Nano Oscillatory Motion by next week", so of course I was scouring the countryside going to garage sales and second-hand stores...but here we go! Right here on Slashdot! Very useful stuff.

    1. Re:I was looking for this exact thing... by jimbug · · Score: 1

      you're on your when it comes to decorating them in glitter glue though.

      --
      Bite my shiny metal ass.
  4. Magic mushrooms? by Prysorra · · Score: 2

    So they tilt to the beat, do they?

    Well.....they still aint got nothing on the singning mushrooms from Tength Kingdom!

    Ah.....suck an elf.

  5. Smaller Scale Still by Nom+du+Keyboard · · Score: 2, Informative

    Excuse me, but, doesn't this happen on the atomic level? Apply heat, and atoms vibrate.

    --
    "It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
    1. Re:Smaller Scale Still by Minimum_Wage · · Score: 1

      Yeah, but atoms aren't as cute as nano-mushrooms!

    2. Re:Smaller Scale Still by jimbug · · Score: 1

      yes, but do they jive?

      --
      Bite my shiny metal ass.
    3. Re:Smaller Scale Still by jcorno · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Excuse me, but, doesn't this happen on the atomic level? Apply heat, and atoms vibrate.


      Yeah. At random frequencies, and in random directions. What good is that?
    4. Re:Smaller Scale Still by camperdave · · Score: 3, Funny

      Well, by simply hooking the logic circuits of a Bambleweeny 57 Sub-Meson Brain to an atomic vector plotter suspended in a strong Brownian Motion producer (say a nice hot cup of tea) one could make all the molecules in a hostess' undergarments leap one foot simultaneously to the left in accordance with the theory of indeterminacy. Some people might use it to break the ice at parties.

      --
      When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
    5. Re:Smaller Scale Still by moderatorrater · · Score: 1

      They need regular motion, like a pendulum, and it's more than one atom working together. Applying heat makes individual atoms move randomly and generally not in the same direction as others.

    6. Re:Smaller Scale Still by gardyloo · · Score: 1

      I've always loved that description, except I've never thought that one foot was nearly enough. Wouldn't the waitress just end up with one bare leg, and the other in the wrong leg-hole? And even more importantly, whose left?!?

    7. Re:Smaller Scale Still by camperdave · · Score: 1

      And even more importantly, whose left?!?br>
      I wouldn't know. I don't get invited to those sorts of parties.

      --
      When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
  6. That ain't twee. by camperdave · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I didn't know what "twee" was, so I had to look it up. Applying the jive filter doesn't make it nauseatingly cute, just nauseating.

    Besides, is this what Slashdot has devolved to? All you have to do is apply a text filter to an article to get your story submission accepted? Sheesh! Maybe if I had borkified the story I submitted a couple of weeks ago about the shuttle not needing its tiles repaired it wouldn't have been rejected.

    --
    When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
    1. Re:That ain't twee. by veganboyjosh · · Score: 3, Funny

      i speek bork, yuoo insenseetife-a clud!

    2. Re:That ain't twee. by mikael · · Score: 4, Funny

      I use a jive filter for reading slashdot - it helps liven up those technically complex stories:

      Slashdot in Jive

      --
      Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
  7. NOT a constant force. by gardyloo · · Score: 0
    (Emphasis mine)

    The force disappears and the mushroom's stiffness sends it swinging back to the source again like metronome, and the process starts again.

    Voila! A nanomechanical oscillator that converts a a constant force into an oscillation. Huh. A force which is NOT constant is described as a constant force. Nice. This is just the charged-ping-pong-ball-near-a-Van-de-Graaf generator experiment, only writ on a small scale.
    1. Re:NOT a constant force. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Agreed. If we could generate power from a constant force, wouldn't that solve all of our power problems forever? Gravity is a constant force, and it's available in all parts of the earth at a constant level at all times. In that light, it sounds a little too much like perpetual motion to me.

  8. A song springs to mind... by gardyloo · · Score: 3, Funny

    ... Jumping electrons = badgers;
                nano-pillar = mushroom;
                I'm still working on the "Snaaaake! Snaaaake!" bits.

    1. Re:A song springs to mind... by jd · · Score: 1

      I've a different song in mind - Bad Karma in the UK. Getting the lyrics to work is much easier when they never made any sense anyway.

      --
      It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
    2. Re:A song springs to mind... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So what your claiming is that this intellectual property clearly originally dates to this:

      http://www.badgerbadgerbadger.com/

      and that clearly the great alien minds who tried to explain this to us simply oversimplified and explained it with a dancing flash animation for kids?

    3. Re:A song springs to mind... by gardyloo · · Score: 1

      I'm not sure if that's what I meant. Do you have a dancing flash animation to maybe explain it to me?

  9. Re:Nano Pillars? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    agreed, that AC post was funny. (and it wasn't by me).

  10. Re:Nano Pillars? by Adambomb · · Score: 0

    PERFECT!

    I'll be right back, I need to pick up a whole shitload of concrete.

    --
    Ice Cream has no bones.
  11. Re:Nano Pillars? by timster · · Score: 0, Redundant

    When you post a joke, you take the risk that it's not funny. When you post it as an FP the risk doubles, since an unfunny joke as FP just looks like a grab for attention.

    Moderation isn't a comment on anyone's personal worth, hygiene, or penis size. If you laughed at the joke, good for you, but I'm not surprised if most mods consider it a dumb pun. Complaining about moderation is just about the most pointless thing possible, second only to responding to such complaints.

    --
    I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
  12. (YES it is) - Re:NOT a constant force. by RobertM1968 · · Score: 1

    You are mis-reading the article...

    Give the mushroom a push and it leans towards the source electrode where electrons tunnel across into the mushroom head. The DC field exerts a force on this extra charge on the 'shroom, pushing it towards the drain electrode where the electrons jump ship. The force disappears and the mushroom's stiffness sends it swinging back to the source again like metronome, and the process starts again.

    The stiffness/weight/pressure/whatever is the constant force. The (constant) DC field works in conjunction with the charge on the mushroom head pulling it to the drain electrode - which drains the charge - and then the (constant) stiffness/weight/etc pulls it back to the source electrode where the mushroom head gets "re-charged" - thus starting the whole process all over again...

    1. Re:(YES it is) - Re:NOT a constant force. by gardyloo · · Score: 1

      I understand that the DC force from the electrodes is essentially constant. However, the total force on the "mushroom" is NOT constant (as you state in your post). I read the summary as giving a whole lot of emphasis on this "constant force" thing, which is probably my mistake.

            It's really no different a concept than seeing a bouncing ball as subject to a constant (gravitational) force, except when it's not, as when the concrete smacks it back upward.

            Perhaps this is what people more conversant with computers than I mean when they post stuff like "Why the heck is this news for nerds? Everyone knows this!" To me, this was a non-starter. Slow news day?

    2. Re:(YES it is) - Re:NOT a constant force. by Control+Group · · Score: 2, Informative

      It's really no different a concept than seeing a bouncing ball as subject to a constant (gravitational) force, except when it's not, as when the concrete smacks it back upward.

      If you have an oscillating body of a given mass, then obviously the net force on the body isn't constant, given F=ma. There's no question about that (though it would certainly be newsworthy if someone discovered that F=ma doesn't hold). The question here is whether the input force is constant. The story is that they've replicated on a nano-scale turning a constant force input into an oscillating net force at the point of interest, something which has apparently not been done before.
      --

      Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
    3. Re:(YES it is) - Re:NOT a constant force. by gardyloo · · Score: 1

      The story is that they've replicated on a nano-scale turning a constant force input into an oscillating net force at the point of interest, something which has apparently not been done before. Good point. However, I'd bet that it's NOT a constant force input, as they're using a lock-in amp to monitor things. That implies an oscillating voltage on a measureable scale. After all, as the mushroom head traverses the space, the Coulombic repulsion on the electrons waiting at the pick-up site decreases; once the electronic cargo is dropped off and starts wandering down the egress wire, this force disappears (assuming a grounded oscillator).
            I don't know if this has been done on a nano-scale before: you're probably right that this aspect is the real news.
    4. Re:(YES it is) - Re:NOT a constant force. by scottrocket · · Score: 1

      Analogous to a nanoscale version of (Ben)Franklins Bells?

  13. One of these by billsf · · Score: 1

    The paper has very few details. The thoughts I get are:
    1) Hints of 'room temperature' superconductors.
    2) A new type of amplifier -- only maybe.
    3) A joke paper. That seems to be what most think.
    The charged ping-pong balls on the van der Graf generator is a nice explanation. 16VDC on the nano-scale is HIGH VOLTAGE.

    1. Re:One of these by ppanon · · Score: 1

      Yeah, it does sound a little like this (scroll down a bit to "Y'ALL KEWL BOMB DOODZ")

      --
      Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
  14. Re:Nano Pillars? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I have an exquisitely well-tuned sense of humor, so I am well-qualified to tell you that you're an unfunny cunt. Would you tell that joke to your friends? No because you don't have any. I am a mean-spirited bastard but at least I know not to say fucking stupid unfunny things on a public forum.

  15. Re:Nano Pillars? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    now that was funny.
    really though, it did make me chuckle.

  16. Sad news ... Fidel Castro, dead at 81 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I just heard some sad news on talk radio - Socialist/Communist dictator Fidel Castro was found dead in his Havana home this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his regime, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon.

  17. Re:Nano Pillars? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How the fuck was that funny you cretin?

  18. Not only twee...it is wrong too by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Firstly electromagnetism is understood down to scales many orders of magnitudes lower than the nanoscale. QED is the second most accurate scientific theory ever (special relativity is the winner) and works at distances considerably less than nuclear diameters (one million times smaller than nano-scale). Secondly a pendulum does not convert a constant force into an oscillation because it has to have an initial excitation in the form of an applied force. This force must be applied and then removed so it is non-constant. Even if we ignore that the pendulum requires a string tension to work and that is an EM force so it is wrong to think of it as pure gravity. Conclusion: this guys physics is as heavily accented as his american.

    1. Re:Not only twee...it is wrong too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A pendulum is acted upon by a constant force, gravity. The act of raising the pendulum isn't what sets it into oscillation. The releasing of it and letting gravity act on it without a counter force is what starts the oscillation.

    2. Re:Not only twee...it is wrong too by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 1

      A pendulum is acted upon by a constant force, gravity. The act of raising the pendulum isn't what sets it into oscillation. The releasing of it and letting gravity act on it without a counter force is what starts the oscillation.

      i.e. you have to excite it from the groundstate using a non-gravitational force...and you still have not addressed the EM force in the string which is in fact what allows it to oscillate. The only example of a pure gravitational oscillator I can think of would be a globular cluster where the stars oscillate about the centre of mass of the cluster. However there the gravitational force is certainly not constant.

  19. Re:Wasn't It Cool When... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Wasn't it cool when science gave us things like electricity and airplanes and phones? Lately, it seems we get more and more of this "we can make really small shit move" stuff.


    You know, electricity's basically about making really small shit move, but I think it had quite a good reception with the masses.
  20. Nano oscillatory motion? by HandsOnFire · · Score: 2, Funny

    that's the term my gf used when she mentioned having sex with her ex-boyfriend.

    1. Re:Nano oscillatory motion? by habbi · · Score: 1

      hehehe

  21. I hate this by Jugalator · · Score: 1

    I hate when I'm a geek and still don't understand the news on Slashdot. :-(

    I'm Swedish so I didn't even understand the word "twee". Now I at least added it as a keyword for the story, and I think I'm done here.

    --
    Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
    1. Re:I hate this by Zephyr14z · · Score: 1

      It's not a very commonly used word here in the States either.

  22. Re:Nano Pillars? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I like it when people talk down to me. Oh yea! Insult me more! I'll just keep laughing cause I think it's funny! call me a bastard!!

  23. So.... by stonedcat · · Score: 0

    Who else read the title and thought "small penis"?

    --
    You can't take the sky from me.
  24. Sir, you're forgetting... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...that only works if you reverse the polarity.

  25. Re:Nano Pillars? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "second only to responding to such complaints".

    You just responded to such a complaint. Oh, did you shoot yourself in the foot or in the face?

    He just did it for the lulz.

  26. Re:Nano Pillars? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Well the evidence suggests that you find any fucking thing funny, so I'm not going to read too much into your disappointing, mediocre riposte.
    Although I managed to find some merriment when I imagined your inane grinning rictus frightening passers-by, so pumped up with anti-depressant meds that you somehow find your life bearable.

  27. It hasnt been said yet... by flayzernax · · Score: 1

    But, I for one welcome our mushroom-shaped nano-pillar overlords!

    1. Re:It hasnt been said yet... by searob · · Score: 1

      It hasn't been said yet before you, and it shouldn't. Ah! This getting so old and over-used.

  28. We already had this. by Mal-2 · · Score: 1

    Your average slashdotter produces millions of nano-oscillators daily, and usually releases them while imagining covering a naked and petrified Natalie Portman in hot grits. All it takes is one hand, a few minutes, and a locked door.

    Mal-2

    --
    How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
  29. Re:Nano Pillars? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Really? I MUST buy some of this stuff, urgent.

  30. Things ain't what they used to be by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Can all the guys who came over from digg or wherever please go back.

    I was really looking forward to the low down on this from several half assed but semi-informed dweebs and all I can surmise is that they're either all on vacation at the moment or they can't be bothered trawling through this shite.

  31. Euphemizmz by paleo2002 · · Score: 1

    Its interesting how everyone seems a lot more concerned with the language used to report this bit of science rather than the discovery itself. The comments on the original blog entry are quite interesting. Several people complain about the "southern slang" or "aww-shucks" style of writing. I looked at it and thought "hip-hop lyric" myself.

    We're all getting at something, aren't we? I also wonder if people complained this much when science journals began switching from Latin and German to English.

    1. Re:Euphemizmz by crymeph0 · · Score: 1

      This isn't like switching from one recognized language to another so more of your audience can understand. This is intentionally using bad grammar that's likely to make it harder for your audience to understand, in the name of spicing up boring science/getting attention daddy never gave you/looking cool to people who don't get it anyway/some other stupid reason.

      --
      It should be illegal to say that freedom of speech should be limited.
  32. what is the sounds of one hand clapping by Hasmanean · · Score: 1

    What is the sounds of one hand clapping?
    What is the sound of a DC field causing oscillations?

    It is one and the same thing.

    --
    Hasan