/oss/taxonomy/term/2642/all en /oss/article/history-news-technology/nanotechnology <p style="text-align:justify"><a href="http://blogs.mcgill.ca/oss/?p=3705" rel="attachment wp-att-3706"><img alt="younger" height="150" src="http://blogs.mcgill.ca/oss/files/2012/12/Feynman-150x150.jpg" width="150" /></a>Richard Feynman, Nobel prize winning physicist and science popularizer par excellence liked practical jokes, but I doubt he would have enjoyed watching people in the buff parade on Chicago’s Michigan Avenue with the title of one of his most famous lectures painted on their butt. There they were, exhibiting their derriers, adorned with the words “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom.” They were not exactly paying homage to Feynman’s famous lecture that introduced the concept of nanotechnology; they were protesting the use of the technology by the Eddie Bauer Company to make stain free pants. As if we didn’t have enough things to worry about, activists are now taking aim at nanotechnology, claiming that its risks have not been properly evaluated. So what is nanotechnology? Basically, it is the use of extremely small particles for practical purposes. How small? By consensus, at least one dimension of these particles must be less than 100 nanometers, a nanometer being one billionth of a meter. To put this into perspective, you would need a thousand of these particles side by side to make up the width of a human hair. And why is nanotechnology a field to itself? <a href="http://blogs.mcgill.ca/oss/2012/12/01/nanotechnology/">Read more</a></p> Sun, 02 Dec 2012 04:47:01 +0000 Joe Schwarcz PhD 1837 at /oss