|
What's
your Nano IQ?
Quiz
answers
(go
to quiz)
IQ
rankings
0-3 correct: Nano Novice
4-6 correct: Nano Nerd
7-10 correct: Nano Genius
1.
b. dwarf
From the Greek word nanos or the Latin word nanus.
A nanometer is one billionth of a meter.
2.
d. as long as a trip from Washington, D.C. to Atlanta, Ga.
A
pin head is about a millimeter wide. If a nanometer were as wide
as a pinhead, then a meter would have to be a billion times bigger
or a billion millimeters. One billion millimeters is equal to about
1,000 kilometers (or about 620 miles). The distance (traveling by
road) between Washington, D.C., and Atlanta, Ga. is 632 miles.
3.
b. ten
A hydrogen atom is about 1/10 of a nanometer wide.
4.
e. all of the above. Nanoscale
particles are used in some sunscreens to block ultraviolet light.
Certain brands of khaki pants are made with a nanowhiskers surface
that resists stains. Premium tennis balls can be sealed with nanoparticles
designed to double the balls’ lifetime. Some computer hard
drives have read heads (the stylus that reads magnetic bits) made
with thin films only 1.5 nanometers thick.
5.
c. the approximate amount of force required to break a single chemical
bond between two atoms
The newton (named after physics great Isaac Newton) is the internationally
accepted unit for measuring force. One newton is about equal to
the force needed to hold a dollars’ worth of nickels or (fittingly)
the force required to hold a good-sized apple against the force
of Earth’s gravity. A nanonewton is a billionth of a newton.
6.
c. a unit of information that takes advantage of the laws of quantum
mechanics
In the everyday macroscopic world, objects obey classical physics
laws—e.g., objects can be only in one place at a time. In the
nanoscale world of atoms, objects follow a different set of laws,
the laws of quantum mechanics. In the world of quantum mechanics,
one atom CAN be in two places at once and two atoms can be “entangled”
even though they are apart.
A conventional computer stores all its information in “bits”
represented by a 1 or a 0. But what if each bit in a computer could
be 1, 0, or 1 AND 0 at the same time? This is the beauty of quantum
computing. It packs much more information in a much smaller space,
which allows much faster proccessing. The “bits” are atoms,
or photons, or something else at nanoscale, and each bit can exist
in two different “quantum” states or a blend of those
two states. Thus, the bits in quantum computing are call “qubits.”
7.
c. a photon used to transport quantum information
A photon is a unit of electromagnetic radiation such as light or
X-rays. Photons are quantum units of energy that fly through air.
When used in quantum information processing, photons are “flying
qubits.” Photons can carry quantum information because they
can be oriented with one of two different spins, up or down, or
a blend of these two states.
8.
e, b, and d
In 1924, Albert Einstein (building on the work of Satyendra Nath
Bose) predicted that if you could slow atoms down enough they would
meld into a kind of superatom, all behaving exactly in unison. Seventy-one
years later, Eric Cornell of NIST, Carl Wieman of the University
of Colorado, Boulder, and Wolfgang Ketterle, of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (working independently) proved Einstein
and Bose right. The trio received the Nobel Physics Prize in 2001
for their accomplishment.
A Bose-Einstein Condensate is to a regular collection of atoms what
a laser is to a light bulb. Normally the atoms in a gas are randomly
moving every which way. The atoms in a BEC are perfectly “in
phase,” in the same energy state, doing the same thing at the
same time. A BEC provides a kind of magnifying glass for studying
basic atomic physics.
9.
a. atoms or molecules that spontaneously form uniform single layers
Self-assembled monolayers are made of atoms or molecules that attach
to specific surfaces in very predictable, uniform ways. For example,
alkyl thiol molecules self-assemble on gold surfaces into a single
molecular layer. Alkyl thiol molecules act like a ball and chain.
One end of the molecule (the ball) attaches firmly to gold surfaces
while the hydrocarbon “chain” floats above it. At the
end of the chain, a variety of different chemical groups or “locks”
can be attached. As a result, these surfaces may make good surfaces
for chemical or biological sensors.
10.
a. using the spins of electrons to carry information
Electrons, like photons, have one of two different spins, up or
down. When a device uses the flow of electrons to operate, we call
it an electronic device. When a device uses the pattern of electron
spins to operate, it is a “spintronic” device.
Reference:
National Science and Technology Council, Nanotechnology: Shaping
the World, Atom by Atom, December 1999.
|
