The Nano Tutor
This page is not going to give you a bunch of useless facts that you should stuff into your brain to pass your final exams. The Key about nanotechnology is not what you know, but what you don't know. It's not about memorizing facts and drilling them into your brain to only pass tests - its about a process - a new way of approaching knowledge and learning.
Nanotech means asking why, and not feeling bad when you don't have the answers.
Nanotech means challenging assumptions, exploring new territory, "to boldly go where no man, woman, or child, has ever gone before".
There are some keys that you need to hold in your hands, and once you get a hold of them, the rest is up to your imagination to unlock.
The keys are:
1. A nanometer is one billionth of a meter (that's really, really, really small) Nanotechnology is the ability to manipulate and build with atoms and molecules on the nanoscale. This ability is allowing us to improve on existing technologies and introduce radically new ones with sometimes unbelievable and remarkable properties.
2. Size & Shape Matters. Everything we knew from traditional science is challenged by the nanoscale. Completely new laws, and often unexpected new properties can govern materials at the level of the nanoscale. Geometry also has an impact on our ability to build and design nano-scale devices.
3. Nature is our best teacher. Nanoscience shows us that just when we humans thought we had mastered our environment, we really know nothing at all. Nature has been building at the nano-scale since the dawn of time, and has been doing a great job of it. By studying how nature works at the nano-scale, nanoscientists are unlocking some of the age-old mysteries of our earth.
4. We're One, but we're not the same, we get to carry each other... Nanoscience is highly interdisciplinary. Insights learned from nanobiologists developing stuff to kill bacteria in medical applicatins can have actual applications in fields as remote as petroleum engineering: the same targeted systems that attack cancer cells, can be injected into oil rigs to enhance oil recovery. Cool. Weird. Incredible.
5. Nanoscience offers both great potential and great risks. We need to keep informed of the latest nanotech developments in order to prepare ourselves for the sweeping changes that this next scientific leap will inevitably bring.
Keys to becoming a good nanoscientist:
- Ask why. Keep asking. and when you think you've found the answer: ask why again.
- Look at the world around you. Imagine the possibilities.
- Dream.
- Einstein "A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be." - Keep an open mind.
- Einstein "Information is not knowledge".
- Observe nature.
- Make mistakes. It's the only way to learn.
- Dream some more.
- Believe in yourself.
- Believe in the impossible.
