What Does a $200,000 Butterfly Wing & Photonic Crystals Have in Common?
January 28th, 2010 // 10:19 am @ admin
The Morpho butterfly has long been a fascination to scientists around the world. The dark blue hues of its wings are striking to anyone who has the good fortune to see one of these delicate creatures. This color however, is not generated from pigment. Nearly all colors that are produced in nature [...]
Category : Blog & Nanotechnology
Get Students Mesmerized With Photonic Crystals & Self Assembly
January 25th, 2010 // 10:01 am @ admin
Self-assembly alone is by no means a novel idea. Human beings are self-assembled for starters. That’s right, back when you were still in the womb your body, in a quite miraculous manner, simply knew how to assemble itself. And it doesn’t stop there. The earth is self-assembled. The universe is [...]
Category : Blog & Nanotechnology
How Can “Settling” Be Magic & What Does It Have To Do With Photonic Crystals?!
January 22nd, 2010 // 2:52 pm @ admin
“Opal is a crystal-like lattice of objects in space, in this case, silica microspheres”
One of the cool things about NanoScienceKits.org and our nano science kits is something called ‘natural order’ which is the way the photonic spheres settle into a lattice formation in the test tube. It is important for the nanospheres to be almost [...]
Category : Blog & Nanotechnology
What Is Scilica
January 20th, 2010 // 3:52 pm @ admin
Imagine a robot so small it can be intravenously introduced into the human body to detect and destroy foreign invaders; or a battery small enough to be used for a cell phone but powerful enough to start an automobile. Imagine a microprocessor that uses photons to carry information instead of electrons and doing it [...]
Category : Blog & Nanotechnology
How Big Is A Nanometer?!
January 20th, 2010 // 2:02 pm @ admin
Here at NanoScienceKits.org, we work at a very tiny level; the nano level. At the nano level, we work in a measurement called a nanometer. A nanometer is one billionth of a meter. A meter is about 39 inches long or 3.28 feet. If you were to write a billion as a number it [...]
Category : Blog & Nanotechnology