Slashdot Mirror
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.
I've heard of people doing weird shit with their iPods, but making pillars from Nano's? I guess anything is possible. Sounds expensive, they might want to try to make pillars out of stone or concrete -- it might be cheaper.
Impeach Bush With A Federal Criminal Complaint FP.
Coincidentally, to confirm that I'm not a script, I had to type "dissent".
Amazing.
Heres sum stuff i h8 bout ppl in general so if ur lyk dis save time and dont post ok?
1.People who point at their wrist while asking for the time...I kno were my watch is, where the is yours? Do i point at my down below when i ask where the toilet is?
2.People who are willing to get off their bacside to search the entire room for the tv remote cause they refuse to walk 2 the tv and change the channel manually.
3.When people say while watchin a film"did u see that?". NO fool, i paid 4 pounds to come to the cinema and stare at the dam floor.
4.When you are waiting for a bus and someone asks "has the bus been yet?" if the bus came would i be standing her fool.
5.when somethin dramatic happens lyk u get punched in ur face and sum1 says "are u alright?" oh ye im estatic quik call him back tell him 2 punch me again!
Twee: Nausiatingly cute.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
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.
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.
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."
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!
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.
nano-pillar = mushroom;
I'm still working on the "Snaaaake! Snaaaake!" bits.
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...
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
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.
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.
How the fuck are we supposed to make the average USian understand what this is good for? Hell, I hardly understand what this is good for and I read science and engineering shit all the time.
If they only need a constant field, could they power the device with gravity? Even if this is a "no", it would be cool to have nano machines inside you that were powered when a Doc used a "magic wand" to power the little buggers. Program them to repair a wound and, when injured, they'd be attracted to the Doc holding an energy source over the wound.
Is there enough force in the motion to connect a drivetrain to the device? How much input do we need to get any useful motion out of this?
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
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.
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.
that's the term my gf used when she mentioned having sex with her ex-boyfriend.
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!
Who else read the title and thought "small penis"?
You can't take the sky from me.
...that only works if you reverse the polarity.
But, I for one welcome our mushroom-shaped nano-pillar overlords!
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.
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.
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.
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