If you are an engineer, and hope to establish something, it will last a long time, to take the final element of abuse, and even can withstand 5 hurricane, as well as can be; how would you do it?
Perhaps you would want a material that is stronger than steel, flexible and yet, harder than diamonds; indeed and that is what she said. No more viagra needed? But in all seriousness can you image a real legitimate use for this type of material? How about replacing wooden dams in flood prone areas or cement dams in Earthquake prone regions? How about a car that you could play bumper cars with and never lose, the ultimate urban assault vehicles? Speaking of urban assault and the war in Iraq which is similar to the Los Angeles Freeways, how about a Humvee made out of that kind of material. Yah that would save our Troops from roadside bombs and murderous cowardice International Terrorists indeed. What if you were making these units out of a material that was ten times lighter than steel and 250 times the strength?
Single-walled Carbon Nanotubes (SWNTs) are ideal systems for investigating fundamental properties in one-dimensional electronic systems and have the potential to revolutionize many aspects of nano/molecular electronics. Scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) has been used to characterize the atomic structure and tunneling density of states of individual SWNTs. Detailed spectroscopic measurements showed one-dimensional singularities in the SWNT density of states for both metallic and semiconducting nanotubes. The results obtained were compared to and agree well with theoretical predictions and tight-binding calculations. SWNTs were also shortened using the STM to explore the role of finite size, which might be exploited for device applications. Segments less than 10 nm exhibited discrete peaks in their tunneling spectra, which correspond to quantized energy levels, and whose spacing scales inversely with length. Finally, the interaction between magnetic impurities and electrons confined to one dimension was studied by spatially resolving the local electronic density of states of small cobalt clusters on metallic SWNTs. Spectroscopic measurements performed on and near these clusters exhibited a narrow peak near the Fermi level that has been identified as a Kondo resonance. In addition, spectroscopic studies of ultrasmall magnetic nanostructures, consisting of small cobalt clusters on short nanotube pieces, exhibited features characteristic of the bulk Kondo resonance, but also new features due to their finite size.
Well as an engineer you would be making bridges, nuclear power plants, ships, airplanes, cars, buildings and swimming pools out of it. You would be thinking of Space Shuttles, Lunar Colonies, Satellites, iPods and even the levees in New Orleans, but the more you thought about it, you would say; Golf Clubs, fishing poles and snow boards; boy you do need a vacation don’t you? Yes and they you would be re-designing the Château, ski lift and making yourself a new snow mobile too.
You would water pipes, oil pipelines, aqueducts and Space Needles out of the stuff. You are a true American entrepreneur I can tell, so I am thinking you wish to make flag poles, Washington Monument and even the Statue of Liberty out of this stuff. Oh, did I tell you that this material could conduct electricity and even remain invisible to the naked eye? Oh, there goes your engineering mind again, underground Internet lines; high-tension power lines and ditch those lightning prone telephone wires too. Well, I guess we agree that Carbon Nanotubes are the material of the future then. Think on this.
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