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UK Football Fans: a nanotech question
November 21, 2011 at 4:31 pm
My supervisor at my Romance publisher (and wife’s ex-) sent me a link to an article about a new nanotech product which so completely repels water that it would make a fantastic detergent and water repellant. http://www.zmescience.com/science/nanote...y-14112011
He wondered, however, if this product, slated to come to market soon, might be dangerous.
This got me looking up information about safety studies and regulations of nanoproducts for him (there are none in the USA other than Berkeley CA), and then generally reading about oversized carbon molecules, such as buckminsterfullerene (Buckey balls, or C60), the first such molecule discovered. As it happens, this one actually appears naturally (in soot, and detected in starlight).
Looking at a ball-and-stick model of buckminsterfullerene, and its soccer-ball shape (right down to the correct number of pentagons vis-à-vis the number of hexagons), I was left wondering about a derivation of Einstein's quote: “Does God play soccer with the Universe, and if so, does he support Man United, or Arsenal?”
James, on the Left side of Nebraska.
When encryption is outlawed, only outlaws will have encryption. – Matthew Simpson
"Be ye not lost amongst Precept of Order." - Book of Uterus, 1:5, "Principia Discordia, or How I Found Goddess and What I Did to Her When I Found Her."
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RE: UK Football Fans: a nanotech question
November 22, 2011 at 10:50 pm
(November 21, 2011 at 4:31 pm)Anymouse Wrote:
My supervisor at my Romance publisher (and wife’s ex-) sent me a link to an article about a new nanotech product which so completely repels water that it would make a fantastic detergent and water repellant. http://www.zmescience.com/science/nanote...y-14112011
He wondered, however, if this product, slated to come to market soon, might be dangerous.
This got me looking up information about safety studies and regulations of nanoproducts for him (there are none in the USA other than Berkeley CA), and then generally reading about oversized carbon molecules, such as buckminsterfullerene (Buckey balls, or C60), the first such molecule discovered. As it happens, this one actually appears naturally (in soot, and detected in starlight).
Looking at a ball-and-stick model of buckminsterfullerene, and its soccer-ball shape (right down to the correct number of pentagons vis-à-vis the number of hexagons), I was left wondering about a derivation of Einstein's quote: “Does God play soccer with the Universe, and if so, does he support Man United, or Arsenal?”
James, on the Left side of Nebraska.
When encryption is outlawed, only outlaws will have encryption. – Matthew Simpson
I'm not sure what connection he thought C60 would have to the study, but hydrophobic largely just means molecular systems with non-planar surface structures and little or no significant dipole moments. This prevents the water from readily bonding to the molecules as it does with metals, other compounds, and neighboring water molecules.
If the molecules you're using then order so that water doesn't rest in-between them in any significant quantity (due to the lack of space and weak bond strength), it eventually gets segregated to the surface where it bonds with other water molecules. The larger water agglomerates then move around the surface sort of as bulk aggregates instead of sitting around as smaller aggregates stuck inside crevices and surface spaces.
Based on his emphasis on the stuff kicking out water molecules, that'd be my impression anyway.
Whether it's dangerous is just as likely as whether any other carbon-based product you use is dangerous: if it says don't eat it, don't eat it.
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