Wednesday, April 18, 2007
New perspectives
While blue sky is the backdrop for the flowers of nature, what grows in materials science is build on crystalline lattices. These models of atoms and the various views along different directions give a sense of what it is like instead a solid, and the potential within. These are part of the NISE program, a program to explain nanoscience to the broader community. Shink yourself, and come in.
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2 comments:
Wow! What a beautiful inside structure. Can anything really small fall through there?
Indeed, atoms of other kinds are always "falling" through such solids, which is what makes almost everything possible in our world. And you noticed the very interesting property of "channeling," basically long routes through materials that are like columns where other atoms can move long distances easily, depending on the direction of travel. In real solids, though, the atoms are also moving back and forth, creating even more space for other atoms to move through. Here's one of my favorite examples of moving atoms. The force of spinning turbine blades actually causes atoms in the blades to migrate out to the edges, and eventually the shape changes enough that they are out of spec and need to be repaired or replaced! Nothing stands still inside a material.
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