For Science!

[Mike McC]

Ah, nanochemistry. So much interesting stuff happens with it. I wish I took the lecture/lab when it was offered last year.

Originally Posted by Mauve Mage

The whole "lasts one year" thing intrigures me. What happens to it as time passes? Does it chip away over time? Does it weaken and gain imperfections or something? If that's the case, woud it really be a good idea to use this stuff, as they suggest, in an oven or on other surfaces that come in contact with food?

It'd be no more harmful than if you ate some sand. This is just Silicon Dioxide (sand, glass) on the nanoscale (where it can form different crystalline structures and has some different properties).

Also, yeah, Sith is dead-on about Van Der Waals. You come to know it well as a Chem major.

Originally Posted by Lev

Very interesting, so is it possible that we could make something like a gecko carbon nanotube forest in spray form in the future? Kind of like, hang anything flat on anything else flat without adhesives spray?

As Sith said, there's already some work been put into it. The main problem with creating true 'gecko feet', however, is that the nanostructures we produce are not the best self-cleaning. So, they loose efficiency and degrade with use as more particulates get caught in the nanostructures. They are preforming research on this problem, though.