• Question: What exactly is a nanoscientist?

    Asked by ciaracarroll to Shane, Andrew, Aggelos, Naomi, Eileen on 12 Nov 2012. This question was also asked by carriee, sorcha.
    • Photo: Shane Bergin

      Shane Bergin answered on 12 Nov 2012:

      A nanoscientist is a scientist that studies really small materials – why are they interesting?? When you shrink materials down to almost the size of atoms, the behave really different to their real-world sized cousins. The difference in behaviour is something we wish to explore and exploit. For instance, if you take carbon and shrink it down to the nano scale, it becomes really strong and in certain shapes can conduct electricity super fast. By exploiting the weird and wonderful properties of nanomaterials, we can give new types of materials to engineers (but we have to understand them first).. they will use what the scientists tell them to make massive advances – like laptop screens you could roll up or a mobile phone that would never need to be charged.. all this is possible with nanotechnology

    • Photo: Andrew Jackson

      Andrew Jackson answered on 13 Nov 2012:

      there was a really nice example of nanoscience in biology on TV last night on Richard Hammond’s Miracles of Nature. He showed us how the edges of the feathers on the wings of owls have very tiny indents in them that breaks up the air flowing over their wings, and makes them absolutely silent and deadly predators. And now, engineers are copying this design to make more silent fans for use in hairdryers and building ventilation…. we can learn tons from nature if we just look.

    • Photo: Naomi Elster

      Naomi Elster answered on 14 Nov 2012:

      Nanoscience is a new branch of science that people are very excited about right now. Basically, it is the study of very, very small things. It seems that when something is shrunk down until it is almost as small as an atom (to give you an idea of that size, it you were an atom and you looked up at a single grain of salt, the grain of salt would tower over you like a two story house does to the real you), it starts to behave differently. Nanoscientists are the people who are trying to understand why this happens and how a nanoparticle of something is different from its real-life sized particle.

      When we understand nanoscience, we can use it to develop nanomaterials which we can give to engineers and designers to develop all sorts of wonderful new or improved technology like the examples Shane gave.

      As a biologist, I’m mostly interested in nanomedicine. Sometimes it can be very hard to get drugs into the areas where they are most needed. A classic example of this is the brain, which is protected by a thich tissue called the blood-brain barrier with very small pores that drugs can’t fit through. This means that it’s very difficult to treat diseases of the brain like Alzheimer’s Disease or Parkinson’s Disease.There’s a possibility that nanomedicine, or nanomaterials with drug inside them, would be able to get into the brain and deliver medicines to treat Alzheimer’s. It’s also likely that nanoparticles could be used to deliver drugs far more accurately to where they are needed, which means they would have far less, maybe even no, side effects. Side effects are actually caused by a drug working in the wrong place.

    • Photo: Eileen Diskin

      Eileen Diskin answered on 14 Nov 2012:

      What’s the smallest thing you can think of?!

      Well, a nanometer is waaaaaaaaaaay smaller than that. A human hair is 100,000 nanometers thick. So, ONE nanometer is like if you take the width of one human hair, and divide it into 100,000 pieces. Thats very small!

      Nanoscientists work with things that are this size. So they probably have to have very good eyesight 😉 …or really really good microscopes!

      Nanoscientists are making lots of things we use in our daily lives way better, like fabrics which keep you cool when you’re playing sport, mobile phone covers that ‘self-repair’ if they get scratched, and much much more!

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