By Jim Bissett
Take a look at that tiny strand of hair curled around your comb.
See how wide . . . it isn't?
Now picture that same humble hair 1,000 times smaller than it actually is.
And see that ant scooting across your patio?
Imagine yourself standing in Morgantown, and stretching your arms really long to pick up that same ant on another patio . . . in Erie, Pennsylvania.
If
you can get a sense of that scale, you can get a sense what is
going on in research labs this very minute at West Virginia University.
That dimension may be almost impossible to fathom, yet a group
of researchers and scientists at WVU are making giant strides
in this smaller-than-small research field known as nanotechnology
. . . one atom at a time.
One atom at a time is what it comes down to in nanotechnology.
Nanotechnology is a field where objects can actually be built and manipulated, atom by atom, to make large-scale leaps in the advancement of everything from computers to cancer research.
The research effort is officially known as the WVU Nanoscale Science, Engineering, and Education Initiative, or WVNano, for short.
"It's a new way of discovery," said Dr. Edwin Rood, a physicist by training who is heading the effort for WVU's Research Office. "We can mimic biology at the molecular level. Think of the advances in Alzheimer's research. If you had to repair the nervous system, you could go in without surgery."
"For example," Rood said, "organically built nanobot cancer-fighters infused with life-saving proteins could be ingested or injected to disassemble wayward cells on their way to mutating into tumors."
Molecules of aluminum and other man-made products could be drizzled onto macro-transistors in a laboratory vacuum to take computers and modes of communication to places they've never been before.
And other nanotechnology devices could be tweaked and tuned to create new sources of energy—a consideration more critical than ever in a world where oil-rich regions are wracked by war and political uncertainty.
The nanobot fighters, in particular, make the research a natural sell in places like Morgantown, which serve as major medical hubs for multistate regions. "And that makes it a near-perfect bridge between academia and the private sector," he said. "In other words, not just the lab but life, too."
"We have a chance to really move society forward on a lot of different levels," he said. "When you start looking at things on the scale of nanotechnol-ogy, all those traditional concepts of physics, biology, and chemistry begin to break down. The traditional walls between the disciplines just dissolve."
Which explains the melting-pot nature of the researchers who make up WVNano. Along with Rood, the research body is staffed by Drs. Larry Hornak and Dimitris Korakakis of the College of Engineering and Mineral Resources; physics faculty members Drs. Tom Myers and David Lederman; Dr. Peter Gannett, the associate chair of the School of Pharmacy; chemistry professor Dr. Aaron Timper-man; and Dr. Eric Pyle, an associate professor of science education in the College of Human Resources and Education.
A big part of WVNano is educating the public school teachers of WVU's future students, the science-minded ones who just might study nanotechnology here if they get the right nudge.
That's where Eric Pyle comes in. The professor is just as comfortable in a room full of fourth-graders as he is the research lab, and he says it's just a matter of explaining the scale of boiling a big concept down, down, and down some more, until one reaches the nano-scale level.
It's also important, he said, to remember that the fundamental concept of nanotechnology that self-assembling structures that rearrange their atoms to fit the project is nothing new.
"We think we're so clever in understanding these things," Pyle said, "but guess what? Nature's already there. We have an amazing self-assembling network in our body. It's called DNA."
Rood, meanwhile, says that while he doesn't know where the WVNano research roads will eventually lead, he's also never been happier in that uncertainty.
"The only thing we know," he
said, "is that nanotechnology is going to lead to devices
and advances that you and I can't even imagine yet."