Nano Nano

I meant this as a continuation from last week's authetic conversation with Prof Sow, but somehow I didn't get around to publishing the draft.

So Prof Sow mentioned about all the possibilities with nano technology, and in all truth it is a very new field and much of the $$ is put into. There are loads to be studied about and with better understanding of substance behaviour we can manipulate them for our use.

Silver is a good example. Previously, the use of silver is limited because of its high cost, but now being able to tap on the potential silver by using making nano "particles" of silver which essentially is very much smaller (hence cheaper).

Nano silver fights infections from PhysOrg.com
Silver nanoparticles could help fight hospital-related infections that afflict 2 million patients and lead to 90,000 deaths in the United States each year, experts told UPI's Nano World.[...]

(Nano) Silver coated wound care products are already patented and marketed in several countries. (see it here) Things like that is no longer just science fiction. And of course if you pop down to the electrical stores, nano silver washing machines are readily available (perhaps like this one). Silver poisons bateria but is harmless to us. With silver nano particles embedded into the fabric after the wash, clothing can remain almost 100% bacteria free for quite a while. All this without even using the traditional "heated wash" function.

I would like to leave you with this advice: Don't be drinking silver solutions to boost your immunity just yet. I am serious about this, cos you'd get argyria and turning blue just ain't funny. I've got an article to prove my point: clickie Notice that it IS recent news? More research on the effectiveness on such treatment needs to be done.

How many neutrons can an atom hold?

Now, I think that I've mentioned that there is a theory that the interaction between the protons and the neutrons keeps the nuclei of atoms stable. Which is why most atoms occuring in nature do not deviate from the 1:1 ratio too much without being radioactive. The research in this area is still ongoing with lots of interesting news which really can be so ground breaking that it can change what we know/understand sometimes. Case in point:

A group of scientist, from Michigan State University, who were working on heavy aluminium and magnesium, found that the protons and neutrons do not have to be evenly numbered. With neutrons twice the number of protons, some heavy aluminium and magnesium were found with stability long enough for detection. (of course they decay shortly afterwards)

"They fired a beam of high-energy calcium ions into a sheet of tungsten, producing new elements. Among them, neutron-rich versions of aluminium and magnesium could be spotted in the few milliseconds before they decayed.

The researchers found an isotope of magnesium with 28 neutrons (magnesium-40) — more than twice its normal complement. That's bigger than the previous heaviest magnesium isotope found, which had 26 neutrons."

Read more about it in an article with the same title @ Nature (Published online 24 October 2007 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2007.189). Log-in using the NLB Digital library.

Do atoms ever break down?

Actually they do, but definitely not through our usual chemical reactions. The process is actually quite familiar to many of us. It's called nuclear reaction (because it causes change at the heart of the atoms, the nucleus).Given the same "logic" we can "make" new atoms as well.

There are 2 primary nuclear reactions, nuclear fission (splitting of the nucleus) and nuclear fusion (fusing particles to form a new nucleus). These reactions usually result in a large amount of energy being given off (hence nuclear bomb) mostly in the form of radiation.

Someone asked me about alpha, beta and gamma rays today (all 3 being forms of radiation). I apologise for being vague about beta radiation, cos beta decay is a little complicated. For that I did a websearch and found a pretty good site, for those who are interested in higher level stuff, please go here. For the unintiated it may be a little tough to understand, but it's interesting read outside the syllabus.