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Lego Blocks Simulate Microfluidic Filters
BuzzSkyline writes "Researchers at Johns Hopkins University are playing with Lego blocks to discover how arrays of nanoscopic obstacles could sort cells and other tiny particles by size. Ball bearings dropped through an array of Lego pieces submerged in glycerin serve as an analogue of the tiny systems, with bearings of different sizes taking different paths through the array. An academic paper describing the Lego research recently appeared in the journal Physical Review Letters (subscription required)."
Meanwhile, researchers at Country Bumpkin's Higher Edumacation facility attempted to recreate the experiment with "aftermarket" lego pieces submerged in Everclear.
It goes without saying that the result of experiment caused the science department (located in Uncle Nillis's barn) to be evacuated whilst the fumes cleared out.
Lego? Microfluidic Filters? Yeah and if I reverse the polarity on the main communications array, a tachyon pulse will be generated.
Lego? Microfluidic Filters? Yeah and if I reverse the polarity on the main communications array, a tachyon pulse will be generated.
FAIL: you forgot to mention the Heisenberg compensators and the plasma conduits.
Karma: Excellent. 15 moderator points expire sometime.
Nonsense, obviously the emergency capacitors would absorb any access energy created by the array. The only side effect was in they overloaded they would discharge through the main reactor core overloading several systems, possibly causing a flux in the hyper-drive which would create a tach...
oh wait you are right.
sigs... don't talk to me about sigs....
Biochemists already do this with proteins and other biochemicals and I'm sure other fields have done this with other things. Is this only new and exciting because legos are being used?
wow...
access = excess
in = if
me = just woke up, sorry about that.
sigs... don't talk to me about sigs....
yea but he didn't mention the replicator and transporter systems.
... until I told her "the neat thing" about how the experiments were done.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plinko
its plinko
I build microfluidic devices and man it can be time consuming to design fabricate and test them. To design a good device you have to draw up the design, fabricate it (often in a clean room) and then assemble and test it. With this I could just get a little slimy and in 30 minutes have a good idea if what I have is going to work...Now I just have to convince my boss I'm not just playing with Legos at work
And the inertial dampeners... never forget the inertial dampeners.
Now when my wife asks why I waste my time with Legos I can tell her that I'm learning how to sort nano-particles in microfluidic arrays!
Lurve those things.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Reporters and the like are always trying to get an 'angle' obviously, but still - it's a little lame to emphasize the Lego portion of this. I love Legos, but let's face it - this apparatus could have been built out of many other things. The real 'science' behind this story is the construction of a scale model and details upon how the researchers were able to prove similitude between the large and micro scales. Not that pop sci articles aren't valuable, but using Lego as a hook to a legitimate science publication seems gimmicky.
Lego blocks, is there anything they can't do?
Is there anything they can't do?
(And I know the "proper" company defined term is Lego blocks. Fuck you.)
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
I'm impatiently waiting for Construx quantum physics and Lincoln Log genetics.
... Using Mega Bloks instead of Legos?
Don't worry about it. You've already displayed more attention to detail than those involved with actually writing the dialog for the real show.