Scientists Create Functional Nanocar
By David Ponce
OMG, Holy Crap and all that noise! Some scientists at Rice University have done the unthinkable: they’ve created a functional “nanocar”, consisting of a chassis, axles, and four Buckyballs as wheels. It’s about 4 nanometers across (slightly wider than a strand of DNA, a human hair being 80,000 nanometers across) and the best part… it actually runs.
The nanocar consists of a chassis and axles made of well-defined organic groups with pivoting suspension and freely rotating axles. The wheels are buckyballs, spheres of pure carbon containing 60 atoms apiece.“It’s fairly easy to build nanoscale objects that slide around on a surface,” Kelly said. “Proving that we were rolling – not slipping and sliding – was one of the most difficult parts of this project.”
Think about it guys… a little car, 20,000 times smaller than the width of your hair, that actually rolls around.
Words fail me. Go here and read more. Story VIA BoingBoing.
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