clhs sciblog » Chemistry

Inventing Self-Repairing Batteries

bakerca — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 07:10:07 +0000

Scientists have yet again invented something new. What is it today? Batteries that repair themselves automatically. How do these scientist make these kind of batteries? Well, the scientists have created these things called metacapsules that repair the battery. These microcapsules, filled with liquid metal, sit on a gold conductive layer. If the circuit is mechanically damaged, the capsules burst to restore the conductive pathway. Each is just 10 microns across. In the article it says that 10 could fit side by side in a human hair.

This is really boss. Imagine a world where batteries, instead of dying out, they just recharge themselves. this would definitely save us some money. Or think bigger by putting something like this in a car battery. We would have batteries lasting seemingly forever. Bringing a whole new meaning to the world of Duracell. To read the article click here.

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A real life spider man?

schrienm — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 00:57:12 +0000

According to BBC News, U.S. researchers have created silk worms that are made to spin thicker and stronger silk. Scientists from the University of Wyoming say that their goal in the future is to create worms that will spin silk that is as tough as spider silk. Which in weight to weight terms, spider silk is stronger than steel. For many decades scientists have been trying to recreate spider man’s “webbing” which in the movies allowed him to swing among the skyscrapers of the city.

This discovery and creation sounds like something out of a comic book, however the medical field could greatly benefit. The stronger silk could help create better sutures, implants, as well as ligaments. Also the silk could be a greener substitution for toughened plastics that demand a lot of energy to create. Some people have concerns if the worms were released into the wild but professor Guy Poppy of Southampton University said that they would not pose a threat to the environment. Professor Poppy said, ”It’s hard to see how a silkworm producing spider silk would have any advantage in nature.”

To read more, click here.

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New Metal Found Deep in Earth

rosenoec — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 04:12:33 +0000

Inside Earth’s core, the pressure and temperatures are so intense that when atoms and electrons are squeezed tightly together, they react quite differently than normal. Their materials change with depth. New experiments and studies have revealed that iron oxide undergoes drastic changes deep inside the earth. Iron oxide, FeO, is a components of ferropericlase, the second most abundant mineral in Earth’s lower mantle. Ferropericlase contains magnesium and iron oxide. The lab team imitated the extreme conditions of the Earth’s interior by setting the pressure to 1.4 million times atmospheric pressure and setting the temperature to 4,000°F. These conditions are the same as the conditions are at the core-mantle boundary. The lab team’s theory and experiments predicted a new kind of metallization in FeO. When placed under these extreme conditions, compound usually undergo structural, chemical, and electronic changes. The iron oxide, however, did not! What it did do was change from being an insulator to a highly conducting metal, all without changing its structure. This means that iron oxide, FeO, can be both an insulator and a metal, depending on the surrounding pressure and temperature.

It is pretty astounding that one mineral has properties that can differ so greatly! This is quite a major discovery, and I believe scientists should continue to test other minerals and elements, and see if there are others that perform the same way.

You can click here to read the article.

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Viruses Build Molecules

brownng — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 07:03:23 +0000

Scientists have used a well-known virus to produce resemblances of skin and bone. Besides just exploring how these materials develop in the natural world, their hard work also “brings synthetic production of tissue… closer to reality.

Basic molecules are combined with other chemicals to create completely different material. The article uses the example of protein. Protein is a general molecule that can produce much more complicated combinations. The article also says, “Collagen type I, for instance, is a protein molecule that can combine with various other chemicals to form skin, bone or even eye tissue.” The process used here is called self-templating. Thermodynamic factors are used as controls to make sure that the result is what is wanted. Most scientists like to “mimic” processes such as these. Although, there is a sensitivity to these thermodynamic factors that are mentioned, which makes these molecules incredibly uncooperative. “Indeed, it remains a mystery how nature can achieve the precision control that has so far eluded the laboratory chemist.”

Researchers decided to use M13 phage as a base unit instead of a different molecule; in this case, collagen. M13 attacks unwanted bacteria, but leaves humans completely unharmed. m13 is also very easy to grow and produce in the lab because, “its protein coat can be manipulated by genetic engineering .” This was discovered by Seung-Wuk Lee, Angela Belcher and colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin in 2002.

To read full article, click HERE.

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Microscopic View on Quantum Fluctuations

schobeef — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 06:47:19 +0000

At absolute zero all motion in the world is frozen. Even though everything is frozen special quantum mechanical fluctuations persist and can cause the transition between two quantum phases. Scientists first cool the rubidium atoms to a temperature much like absolute zero. Then it goes to a light field where lasers create a one dimensional optical lattice. To read more click here.

Non-local order parameters have been measured for the first time because of this method. Scientists can now use this method of measuring to spot topological quantum phases. This can help scientists to better knowledge about superconductivity at a high temperature. It could also be helpful with quantum computers.

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New Knowledge About ‘Flawed’ Diamonds Could Speed the Development of Diamond-Based Quantum Computers

venricch — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 02:16:38 +0000

The study of diamond based technology took an unexpected turn when mistakenly scientists used a “flawed” diamond. Fortunately this mishap helped them take a leap to a faster discovery. It gave them a better understanding of these defect systems. Diamonds were being researched because of their strong and interesting structure. The reason why some diamonds may be defected is if a nitrogen atom sits along a vacant space. At this imperfection, the vacant-nitrogen space, an electron can jump to different energy states. This causes the electron to be more “excited” and become hyper. This is crucial to the base of computing systems. More research is being done to discover how long an electron can remain in the “excited” state.

New discoveries in technology are always exciting. It is always advancing so fast to big things the little discoveries we often don’t keep up with. Its interesting to think new applications of technology may be diamond based because of their structure and some of them because of the placement of their vacant-nitrogen center. I look forward to hearing more. If you would like more information click here.

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Nanotechnologists Take Lessons from Nature

dyrssewc — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 03:54:12 +0000

It is known that perfection is the enemy of good, but in the nanoscale world perfection is the enemy of the best. Engineers and scientists go to great lengths to make the devices we use as perfect as possible, and there is always room for improvement and the ability out-due the previous device. For example; when we walk into a room and we flip the switch we expect the lights to turn on. Or when we turn the key to start the car we know the engine will start up, only on some rare occasions does that not happen. They have done this by using a design process combined with the application of large amounts of energy to increase reliability by suppressing natural variability. However it is quite different in the nanoscale world. That is because objects at this size behave in a fundamentally different fashion than larger-scale objects. The difference between the behaviors of large-scale and nanoscale objects is the role that noise plays. To scientists, noise isn’t limited to unpleasant sound. At the level of atoms and molecules, noise can take the form of random motion, which dominates to an extent that it is extremely difficult to make reliable devices.

Nature has found a way to put these much different scaled object to work. Nature allows living organisms to operate more efficiently than what human-made devices can do. As the world keeps progressing so do the things in the world. There will always be room for improvement, all you need is one idea to unleash a whole new world of inventions. To find out more and to get an idea CLICK HERE.

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Antimatter Atoms Are Now Able To Be Stored

foleyjt — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 05:02:05 +0000

A group of international scientists all the way over in Switzerland are really doing some interesting work with atoms. Last year back in November, they informed the scientific world of their achievement. This unheard of accomplishment was being able to capture and store antimatter atoms for relatively short periods of time. These same scientists had invented the device to do so, which was basically made up of a incredibly powerful magnet that is able to capture the antimatter atoms. To read the full article, click here.

At the present time, this ability to capture and store antimatter atoms does not seem useful or productive. It honestly seems like quite the waste of time to me. But according to one of the scientists on the team, the findings from this experiment open up the field to new and more productive experiments that will do some good for the scientific world. Also, from this experiment they have learned a lot and will continue to learn more about these atoms and be able to study them more thoroughly. It will be interesting to see what more comes from this as the scientists got better and better as time went along on capturing the atoms. Stay tuned to see what’s next!

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First Polymer Solar-Thermal Device

schobeef — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 04:23:01 +0000

Most geothermal add-ons for heat pumps take heat from the air or ground, but the new polymer solar-thermal device uses a fluid to accumulate heat from the sun. At the same time an integrated solar cell creates electricity from the sun’s visible light. Researcher, David Carroll, says,”It’s a systems approach to making your home ultra-efficient because the device collects both solar energy and heat.” The solar-thermal device takes advantage of the power of the sun. A standard rooftop solar cell only collects 25% of the energy the sun provides because it can’t collect infrared heat. To read more click here.

This is a great advancement. Standard solar cells have, at the most, an 8% efficiency converting solar energy to heat, but the solar-thermal device has a 30% conversion efficiency. Unlike a normal solar cell that collects the most sunlight between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., the new device provedes power for a larger part of the day. This advancement could cut the cost of heating a home by 40%.

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Mysterious Process of Cell Division

schobeef — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 02:43:44 +0000

Christine Keating and Meghan Andes-Koback,from Penn State University, used a new technique of constructing models of primitive cells from the bottom up to demonstrate that the structure of a cell’s membrane and cytoplasm is important to cell division. It might even be as important as the specialized machinery found in living cells. Keating and Andes-Koback made models of simple, non-living cells and used the models to prove that the process by which a cell splits into two distinct daughter cells, called asymmetric division, can occur even without complex cellular components such as genes. To read more click here.

Even though they want to use this information to help prove that life originated from non-life the information can very helpfulto us in the future. Once the researchers fully understand what it is that makes a cell behave the way it does, they might be able to create better disease treatments by targeting errors in intracellular organization.

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