Nanotechnology

As Pecovitz (1997) notes, "nanotechnology conjures images that seem a little preposterous even to the most optimistic technophiles: microscopic cell-repair machines speeding through your bloodstream, tiny terabyte memory chips, dirt morphing into Caesar salad" (Pescovitz, 1997, 3). Pescovitz, a contributing editor of Wired Magazine adds "even though nanotechnology--an approach to engineering where individual atoms are positioned to build practical structures--was first proposed by famed physicist Richard Feynman way back in 1959, practical applications remain scarce" (Pescovitz, 1997, 3).

Pescovitz's (1997) article was describing the fifth Foresight Conference on Molecular Nanotechnology held in November, 1997, where 325 nanotechnologists gathered to hear keynote speaker Richard Smelly, a Rice University professor who shared the 1996 Nobel Prize for the 1985 discovery of buckminsterfullerene (a previously unknown crystalline form of carbon), and who has recently

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re sensor that goes inside the arteries and sends back signals that tell what's going on inside. Some 16,000 of NovaSensor's miniature blood-pressure readers, for instance, can be carved out of a single 4-inch wafer of silicon (Allman, 1992, 53). However, as Allman notes, "making machines smaller and smaller by carving chunks of silicon will ultimately run into physical limitations. Far better in the long run, researchers believe, is the strategy of building machines from individual molecules and atoms using nanotechnology. As with micromachinery, scientists' new ability to manipulate atoms began when researchers found that their old technology could be used in a radically different way" (Allman, 1992, 53). For the past several years, a device called the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) has been a standard laboratory fixture. Then in 1989, to get breathtaking views of individual atoms lurking at the surface of materials. In 1989, an IBM physicist, while playing around with an STM found out that the tip of an STM could not only see atoms but to move them as well. The engineer was extremely excited about his discovery, and "in a fit of company pride, he arranged 35 individual atoms of the element xenon on a pallet of nickel
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Approximate Word count = 2041
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)