Nano Cushion - Collision Impact reduction

Have you ever thought what is the simplest logic behind seat belts and safety crash bags that are installed in your cars? The logic behind them is that they will "elongate" the time of collision by a fraction of seconds, there by reducing the impact, the time taken to transform the kinetic energy to potential energy.

Imagine someone falling down from a 3 rd storied building - if he has directly hit the ground after coming down whole of 35 ft, he is likely to die. What if he hits a tree branch at around 24 ft from ground, then hits the balcony at 12 ft, a moving trolley 4 ft from ground before he hits the floor - he is much more likely survive but ofcourse with crushed bones. What happened to him was that the difference of potential energies at 35ft to floor has been distributed in series of impacts instead of one big thud. In world of finite element analysis, they multiply these impacts by an order of million and there by giving a smooth ride instead of a fall to the guy who jumped out of the window.

Coming back to air bags, this is achieved through incremental increase in volume of air (if the bag is taut, then it serves no purpose of a cushion) there by reducing the impact. Instead of this singular and linear non-dynamic way of securing crashes, there gotta be a dynamic way of designing car safety. My design would resemble something like a chain saw, where the teeth can close and open and that can be controlled using a timing device.

1. When all teeth are closed, then the surface is flat
2. When all teeth are open, the surface is rugged, like a saw.

This device is fixed underneath the car seat - the seat is firmly coupled to a plank that is edged on the bottom. Essentially, when the saw beneath is in "open" state, the teeth of the seat and teeth of the saw clasp hard and holds the seat tight from bottom. When the saw is in "close" state, the seat can slide back and forth. During headlong crash, the car seat would move forward, so the objective is to make sure that the seat stays "dynamically" stable while the crash is happening.

It can be achieved in following manner. The saw should be motor powered (think electronically controlled motor) to rotate in direction opposite to motion of the seat. If the seat is moving forward at a speed of 10 mph, then the saw goes in open state and moves it back at 12 mph and goes into "close" state. By a series of "open"-"close"-"open"- "close", the seat is let to move forward and backward. If this is done a million times within a second, it would makes the seat to be essentially stable all through crash - there by creating a nano mechanical cushion engine.

Nanomedicine - Targetted medicine delivery

With all due respects paid to the medical advancements happened in past few centuries, we as human-kind are lagging in germ-warfare by atleast a millennium, by modest standards. The reason I say this is that, we still need to go see a doctor and he need to prescribe us medicine, which we induce into our body either by various means - oral being the most predominant. There are alternate medical treatments, which in some cases are proving to be effective, but nevertheless very archiac.

Medicine is not archiac, the way we are practising is. When there is pain in shoulder, the medicine which is calibrated based on ppm calibration is induced into the body, which not only delivers the medicine to the troubled parts of the body but also to the healther parts , which is not required. In some cases, the duration of the medicine has to be made longer (time scale wise), so that the medicine wont become poison the rest of the body. To elucidate further, let us assume that the shoulder cramp needs 10 units of medicine - but with today's medicine delivery capability (which is oral or syrenge), giving 10 units to shoulder means giving 10 units to EVERY part of the body. So doctors and pharmacists go into the bargaining room and optimize so that they give "rations" of medicine (say 1 unit a day) to make sure the rest of body is not treating the medicine as poison.

The other tradeoff in today's method is that one need to take more medicine than necessary, which in terms of economics is pure waste of money.

So how does nanotech help us? By providing us such small scale particles, that can identify the body part with trouble, carry the medicine with them in small backpacks, deliver it to the nano-patient and come out (maybe via urine or maybe by limo, who cares).

The link that I provided above gives us a great understanding medical vision that is propelled by small science. Lets hope that we live long enough to see this vision gets realized.

IBM's Nano initiative

This post can just well be a link to IBM's efforts in our dearest field of study. However, I would also like to point out their impressive work on Quantum Computing

Along side, feel free to bookmark - their IBM-NANO link.

What money people think of Nano

Dont we all know that what makes or breaks a technology is its own marketability. True, technology markets itself, but only so far;

Hear out to how money managers and money aspirers are going Gaga Over Nano

According to the article the companies to watch for are (I have personally burnt a few hundred bucks on NGEN - and just when I wanted to risk a whole grand on ALTI, it shot up 150% and I backed out) ALTI, JMAR, NANX and TINY.

As much as I would like to be associated with nanotech, I would also like to see this industry grow and benefit millions of people; like providing cheaper, efficient and fool proof drugs; like providing low energy alternatives in walks of life, better roads, better transportation, become environment friendly and also who knows make us dance better and sing smoother. :-)

All'z been well and my motto is to hear "We live in such a tiny world".

Feynman Speaketh

I would be doing a great injustice to myself if this very first link to be presented about nano-tech isnt the lecture delivered by Mr.Feynman at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society at the CALTECH.

Here is the precursor of our interest.

The above link also has people's reactions to the lecture.

Just an update

Note: The following blog should be treated ONLY as an exercise to demystify the term "nano" and related technology.

Imagine yourself as a student of 11th grade and your math and physics teachers are desperately trying to explain things that are infinitely small, things they are so small that they are trying to make you picture the opposite end of infinite. They coined a word “infinitesimal; which might have been a take-off from a phrase “infinite decimal”. However, for matters of practical physics, scientists are able to only count 9 decimals and hence we are looking at nine decimals, “nano-decimal”. They really invented a new word (just like computer back in 30’s) nano-tech.

Most scientists back in 80’s have toyed and also made some progress with the theory of strings; however certain advancements made at this nano-scale has been turning the world of manufacturing (to begin with) upside down and brought to us a plethora of goods like cheaper and denser hard disks, fasters chips and many more. Couple to these are the efforts to reduce the power consumption of many automatic devices (they can be anything right from a valve that controls huge turbines, to the chips that are buried deep down inside your car’s electronic control board) – we are seeing exciting changes all around us, but this is happening at “small” levels (literally), we are being completely oblivious of all.

I see a few websites that already provide information like “publications”, “research” etc. I plan to do that all, but some more. I would like to give my own inputs in this blog and try to make it as original as possible.

Humble beginnings

This is my effort to provide all kinds of information about upcoming science of Nanotechnolgy. This field absolutely fascinates me, even though I dont earn my bread and butter due to it. I hope one would appreciate my humble effort. Please drop in with your comments and also suggestions as to how I can begin and also make this a worthwhile experience.