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Microscopic Guitar

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Taken from Discover.com Now They Just Need a Microscopic Jimi Hendrix By Alex Stone January 01, 2004 | Technology Physics graduate students at Cornell University have played the world�s highest musical notes by using laser beams to �pluck� the strings of a guitar the size of a red blood cell. This miniature performance demonstrates techniques that could be used to build microscopic machines and biological sensors. Drawing on the work of former Cornell physics graduate student Dustin Carr, who is now at Sandia National Laboratories, Keith Aubin and his colleagues used a beam of electrons to emboss a guitar shape�in this case, a glam-rock-inspired �Flying V��onto a silicon crystal. When stimulated by a laser, the guitar�s silicon strings resonate at frequencies corresponding to the notes (E-A-D-G-B-E) of a normal guitar but 100,000 times higher in pitch. A spectrum analyzer can pick up the vibrations, which a computer then modulates down to an audible level. The researchers are still a long way from mastering �Stairway to Heaven,� however. �We were able to vibrate multiple strings at once to play two notes,� Aubin says. �But that�s the closest that we could come to actually playing a song.�

Pretty intresting, the nanotechnology age is upon us.

Re: Microscopic Guitar

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Originally posted by TeKnoHe@d2025 Pretty intresting, the nanotechnology age is upon us.

Yeah, but if you don't look closely... you'll miss it!

Re: Re: Microscopic Guitar

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Originally posted by SuperFarStucker Yeah, but if you don't look closely... you'll miss it!

haha

Re: Microscopic Guitar

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Originally posted by TeKnoHe@d2025 Pretty intresting, the nanotechnology age is upon us.

Pfft, nanotechnology, welcome to twenty years ago. It's all about FEMTO-technology now.

BTW, femto = 10^(-15). If measuring time at this resolution, one femtosecond is the time it takes for a pulse of light to travel the length of a virus

still no cure for cancer

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Originally posted by whiskers still no cure for cancer

Not yet maybe. But just you wait To put femto into perspective: simple aritmetic shows that (1 fm : 1 nm) == (1 nm : 1 mm)

Actually, one of the most exciting uses of femtotechnology is in taking "snapshots" if you will of chemical reactions.


Potential applications include:

A far better understanding of the inner workings of cells at the molecular level (ie: enzymes, protein formation, etc.)

Ultra-fast electronic devices (such as optical logic gates, etc.)

Unimaginable information capacity (think writing a word in an atom's electron cloud)

This is cutting edge stuff.


What lies beyond femto?

Atto (10^-18) One attosecond is the time it takes for light to travel the diameter of an ATOM!!!

Zepto (10^-21)?

Yocto (10^-24)?

Maybe at some point we will discover that space is discrete and that we cannont look with higher resolution anymore? Loop quantum gravity anyone? Why fly to Mars when you can take a stargate?

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Originally posted by zarathustra Not yet maybe. But just you wait To put femto into perspective: simple aritmetic shows that (1 fm : 1 nm) == (1 nm : 1 mm) Actually, one of the most exciting uses of femtotechnology is in taking "snapshots" if you will of chemical reactions. Potential applications include: A far better understanding of the inner workings of cells at the molecular level (ie: enzymes, protein formation, etc.) Ultra-fast electronic devices (such as optical logic gates, etc.) Unimaginable information capacity (think writing a word in an atom's electron cloud) This is cutting edge stuff. What lies beyond femto? Atto (10^-18) One attosecond is the time it takes for light to travel the diameter of an ATOM!!! Zepto (10^-21)? Yocto (10^-24)? Maybe at some point we will discover that space is discrete and that we cannont look with higher resolution anymore? Loop quantum gravity anyone? Why fly to Mars when you can take a stargate?

Actually the commonly accepted meaning of nanotechnology refers to structures the have feature sizes less than 100nm. It doesn't refer to time at all. Since the smallest atom for simplicity sake is 0.1 nm = 100 000 fm, there is not really any point in going to 'femtotechnology'.

Yes, you use femtosecond lasers to take smapshots of chemical reactions.

Writing words in an electron cloud? The highest capacity you will ever achieve is by using an electrons spin (up or down) to correspond to binary 0 or 1, which means that you will need many electrons to actually write words. Whether or not you can write entire words in electron clouds still remains to be seen. Even if you were to encode the information in a bunch of atoms in a cloud you would still need a retrival method, which would be difficult due to the interference of the wavefunctions of the multiple electrons.

I believe that either there already are or they are working on attosecond lasers. A classmate of mine worked in Ottawa for the last two Summers that was doing attosecond laser work. I can't remember whether they had one or not. It's pretty hairy stuff though, my classmate was saying they were using something like fifth harmonic generation in their experiments.

Zarathustra, I know from another thread that you attend the U of A. You seem to have some idea of nanotechnology but it isn't totally sound. Are you in engphys? I ask because most of the people around here who actually show interest in nanotechnology and/or know something about it are in engphys. Maybe you're in some of my classes, maybe I'll be a TA of yours in the future.

Cheers.

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