Soft machines modeled from nature
Nanotech scientists are developing "soft machines" inspired by nature. For example, muscle cells, like this one, work by changing shape. Likewise, nano-scale "soft machines" will work by changing shape. (NIST)
DB: This is Earth and Sky. On the scale of atoms and molecules, scientists are building machines that are hard to imagine – but that can be described as “soft.”
JB: That’s according to Richard Jones, a professor of physics at the University of Sheffield in Great Britain. Jones works with chemists who develop materials using nanotechnology – the science of the very small.
Richard Jones: And the aim of this, really, is to try and think of some way of copying nature, in the sense that we want to make a device that will convert chemical energy to mechanical energy, directly. So we put in a fuel, and we’ll be able to exert a force, just by exploiting the fact that a molecule can change shape.
DB: In other words, this is much the way a leaf on a plant works. It takes sunlight and converts it to chemical energy that the plant uses to grow. Jones told us that scientists are engineering nano–sized materials modeled from nature.
Richard Jones: Our muscles work because we’ve got tiny little motors that are really molecular in size, and it’s because, rather than having a piston, where you’ve got something hard that’s being forced out of a cylinder, it’s actually the molecule itself that changes shape. The molecule that forms the motor is “soft.” It’s a soft molecule, a soft machine.
JB: That’s our show. If you have questions or comments on nanotechnology, come to our website, earthsky.org. With thanks to the National Science Foundation, we’re Block and Byrd for Earth and Sky.
