Research: Find an online example of a new technology that utilizes carbon nanotubes.
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Carbon nanotubes are being used in new fertilizers to increase plant and plant health in crops. The nano-enhanced seeds show an increase in germination percentage and better seedling growth, mostly because of increased water absorption. This new discovery has the potential to eliminate all other chemical fertilizers, which can get into drinking water and wells, while still being a better fertilizer.
ReplyDeleteAlthough this new discovery is still in progress and is not yet ready for production, it still has a high production potential rate, and is most likely to produce much larger and healthier plants in a much shorter time than other fertilizers do.
Pros of the nanotube: - faster growth in plants
- much larger and healthier plants produced
- healthier for the surrounding drinking water
Cons of the nanotube: - they are not very well documented
- harmful to some species of insects
- some have effects similar to that of asbestos
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteAn elevator from earth to space could be made possible by carbon nanotube. NASA would make an elevator till gravity ends, and then carbon nanotube will be made in the shape of a chord and attached to an elevator. It would go out about as far as a satellite. This would help out NASA because an elevator would be not even half the cost of a spaceship. NASA’s current shuttle fleet will be retiring in 2010, and NASA won’t have enough money to replace its fleet until at least 2014. With a space elevator, they could afford to replace the fleet sooner because they would be saving a lot of money on spaceships.
ReplyDeleteAlthough they are still not sure how to make the material long enough to make it to space, they are working on it. If they can figure out how to make it, it will make space travel much faster and much more effective. The Cambridge team makes one gram of carbon nanotube every day. This can stretch to about 18 miles. Although NASA needs about 144,000 miles of nanotube they are making progress. They say this theory won’t happen for another decade, but it is still a very big breakthrough in science.
Pros; be able to use the elevator whenever NASA would like. Cost’s less. Needs less people.
Cons; can only go out so far. Not sure if the carbon nanotube will hold. Very experimental.
http://www.physorg.com/news151938445.html
The Nanotube is a very interesting aspect to the world as we know it. Nanotubes have been constructed with length-to-diameter ratio of up to 28,000,000, which is significantly larger than any other material. These cylindrical carbon molecules have novel properties that make them potentially useful in many applications in carbon nano tube technology, electronics, optics and other fields of materials science, as well as potential uses in architectural fields. They exhibit extraordinary strength and unique electrical properties, and are efficient thermal conductors. Their final usage, however, may be limited by their potential toxicity and controlling their property changes in response to chemical treatment. Nanotubes are members of the fullerene structural family, which also includes the spherical buckyballs. The ends of a Nanotube might be capped with a hemisphere of the Bucky ball structure. The name came from their size pretty much just the word nano basically explains it. Molecular mechanics consists of simulating the behavior of an object by calculating the interaction of every atom with its neighbors. For example, this powerful technique enables us to calculate how tubes of different diameter are distorted when placed on a substrate. It costs the tubes energy to bend or deform, but in turn they can gain energy from the van der Waals interaction with other tubes or with the substrate they are deposited upon.
ReplyDeleteCons of the Nanotube: - they are not very well documented
- harmful to some species of insects
- some have effects similar to that of asbestos
Pros of the Nanotube: - all that’s up in the paragraph http://www.research.ibm.com/nanoscience/nanotubes.html http://www.research.ibm.com/nanoscience/mol__mec_.html
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090304131224.htm
ReplyDeleteThe article I read was about strengthening the exterior of airplanes. Airplanes used to be built from layers of carbon fibers that were glued together with polymer glue. This was okay, but the glue could crack and the carbon fibers would ultimately come apart. This made researchers and engineers look at new and stronger ways to hold the fibers together. They looked at braiding, stitching, pinning, and weaving them together, but all of those methods were problematic because they would damage the carbon fibers themselves and they are what make the composites as strong as they are. Researchers then turned to looking at carbon nanotubes. The way this method works is that polymer glue between two carbon fibers is heated, giving it the consistency of a liquid, and billions of carbon nanotubes would be placed between the two fibers. Because these nanotubes are so strong, the hold between the two fibers would be stronger and researchers think that this method can even make airplanes more resistant to lightning strikes.
Pros:
• Stronger build
• More resistant to lightning strikes
• Only a small percent cost increase
Cons:
• There didn’t appear to be any cons, other than the slight cost increase, but even that is very small.
The article I read was about a carbon nanotube sponge. The sponge can soak up 180 times their weight in organic matter.The current sponges that are used can only soak up 20 times their own wieght. This carbon nanotube sponge doesnt absorb anything but organic material because the nanotubes naturally repel water. Instead of having an ordered array of tubes the researchers created a highly disorderd structure to form a closed interlocking network.
ReplyDeletepros
-oil spill cleanups will be easier and more efficient
cons
- Couldnt find any cons in this.
Carbon nanotubes have certain properties that are far more useful and sophisticated than the hardest metal. Research has been performed on nanotubes since the early 1990’s. Elongated fullerenes were first observed and resembled long narrow tubes of carbon.
ReplyDeleteThey can conduct electricity just like a metal depending on their molecular structure. Carbon nanotubes are the stiffest fiber known to man and are at least 100 times stronger than steel. These nanotubes are far more useful in that they are lighter and can conduct heat as well as diamonds. Nanotechnology can be bad in that nanotubes have to potential to be worse than the inhalation of asbestos. Scientists have concluded that this particular technology could contribute to mesothelioma.
http://envr101.wordpress.com/2009/11/01/nanotechnology-good-or-bad/
http://rqi.rice.edu/research/areas/carbon/carbon.php
http://envr101.wordpress.com/2009/11/01/nanotechnology-good-or-bad/
ReplyDeletehttp://rqi.rice.edu/research/areas/carbon/carbon.php
Over the years scientists have discovered that carbon nanotubes have properties that make it better than some of the strongest metals we have on this planet. It started off with finding the elongated fullerenes and discovering the fact that some can conduct electricity. On top of this most are close to 100 times stronger than steel and reasonably lighter making it better all around.
Pros
100 times stronger than steel
Light
Conduct electricity
Cons
If inhaled it can be bad
May be the cause of mesothelioma.
http://www.azonano.com/news.asp?newsID=101
ReplyDeleteResearchers have found that carbon nano-tubes can now be of use medically and environmentally. Nano-tubes are small and rigid, and "absorbent." It is "absorbent" because it can sponge up molecules that it is placed next to. This can be used with filtering air, gas masks, the purification of chemicals, and drug delivery.
Pros:
-Strong build
-Doesn't conduct electricity
Cons:
-If inhaled, it can be fatal. (similar to fiberglass)
http://www.azonano.com/news.asp?newsID=873
ReplyDeleteThe article is about how one of the greatet American sports companies, Easton Sports, created one of the greatest baseball bats of all time. They did this by using carbon nanotubes. The bat they produced is the CNT. This bat now makes all other bats obsolete. This bat makes it easier hit the baseball farther.
pros: Easier to hit, lighter
cons: Expensive
Research has been done that shows that carbon nanotubes could be used to treat cancer. This could be done because they could be used as agents for photo-thermal therapy. Carbon nanotubes have been used in tests with mice and have shown positive results so far. It is positive enough in mice that they will be advancing the testing to clinical trials in humans. The nanotubes do not stay in the mice, but leave the body through their urine within two months.
ReplyDeletePro:
Gets rid of tumors completely without bad or severe side effects.
Safe, as far as we know!
Cons:
none as far as we know, there may not be enough known about the nanotubes.
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/biz/2009/11/123_56084.html
http://pubs.acs.org/isubscribe/journals/cen/87/i41/html/8741scic4.html
ReplyDeleteThis article is about using carbon nanotubes for plant growth. The scientists at University of Arkansas used these carbon nanotubes in some tomato seeds and didn’t use carbon nanotubes in other seeds. The seeds that had the nanotubes germinated after just three days but the seeds without the nanotubes germinated in twelve days. So, this is saying that the seeds with the nanotubes grew more leaves, roots, and stems than the seeds without the carbon nanotubes. The carbon nanotubes did not give off any toxins so the tomatoes are perfectly fine to eat. Mariya Khodakovskaya said that just because the tomatoes didn’t get intoxicated doesn’t mean that other plants won’t. So they still have to experiment with other plan species.
Pros: The tomatoes will grow faster with the carbon nanotubes in the seeds
Cons: The carbon nanotubes could intoxicate other plants
http://www.livescience.com/health/060509_growing_bones.html
ReplyDeleteA few years ago scientists discovered a new way to replace bones that have been lost in the human body. These bone losses can be due to disease, accidents, or surgeries. Bone grafts can help but they don’t necessarily work as well as patients would like. Bone can also be taken from the body in a procedure using cadavers, which are dead people used for medical purposes, but they don’t grow very well. Nanotubes are now being used as a solution for growing artificial bones. They can “perfectly match the patient and bone” and also fit the gaps between the broken bones. The nanotubes would work the same way as a bone graft only with more precision and a lower chance of rejection. This is because the bone made from nanotubes is directly made from the patient’s own cells. The con of this procedure is that cells have been known to become poisoned by the metals in the tubes causing them to die quickly although there is a newer and more pure version being developed. A pro to growing bones with nanotubes is that the cells won’t reject it as easily and the tubes actually secrete a bone matrix allowing the cells to grow on it.
Articles involving plant growth seem to have been fairly popular choices here. I'm curious though, as useful as this is, is it practical? how expensive would using the nanotubeslike this be? Remembering that the carbon tubes were considered too expensive for the bicycle dealerships, it would be interesting to see how much it costs to fill a single bag of fertilizer to the level used in these plant experiments. On another note, what concentration of carbon nanotubes is needed to make them have a major effect? Is it just a few, or does half the fertilizer have to be made of nanotubes?
ReplyDeleteI don't understand how we will be able to make an elevator into space with nanotubes. How will we get it up there and once it is in space how is it going to come down? Its still a pretty interesting idea though and if NASA doesn't have to spend so much on building spaceships they can use that money towards other equipment.
ReplyDeleteI read Lateesha’s blog about growing bones. It was originally the article I was going to choose, however I opted to read an article about airplanes. I found the article about bone growth to be absolutely fascinating because being able to use nanotechnology to grow bones is a huge step in the medical world. The risk of rejection from the bone graft would be decreased significantly and the growth would be a better fit because the new bone would actually be growing to fill in the gap, not just puzzle-pieced in.
ReplyDeleteI read Lauren's post about the nanotube sponge. I thought this was interesting because it would be really helpful and also something that I would never think about using to make sponges. I don't really understand why the nanotubes repel water. Would th sponges be used for everyday use, like regular sponges? Or only for things like oil spills?
ReplyDeleteI read Jessie’s blog about how they are starting to use carbon to reinforce the outsides of airplanes. I think this is a good use of this element. Lighter faster airplanes are going to be more fuel efficient and overall better for the environment. Besides the fact that the price of carbon can really get up there this is a full proof plan with little to no consequences as I see it. The only question I have is how the airplane companies are going to pay for these experiences and if they’ll really pay off it in the end.
ReplyDelete