In our first lab, we made a ferrofluid. In this lab, we combined chemicals such as iron (II) chloride, iron (III) chloride, and ammonium hydroxide in order to create a black precipitate. The resulting solid is magnetite. The rest of the lab dealt with the manipulation of this solid using a magnet. If done correctly, […]
Just two days after learning about the SEM (scanning electron microscope), I actually got to see it in action today. The first object placed under the lense was the hair from one of my group-mates. As I learned from before, the SEM can only produce black and white images, but even so, the details were […]
The concept products and inventions that were showed to us during the morning presentation were amazing. The Nokia Morph phone was really cool because it completely revolved around nanotechnology and it gave me an idea for a possible product maybe something that I’ll just throw out there. I think it would be really cool if […]
07.14.09 “They stole our idea!!!” I whispered vehemently to Amy, who was sitting next to me in the auditorium that morning. A second later, the two of us burst into giggles, seeing as Nokia’s concept had been developed a year earlier that we had even met each other. In the first days of the Art|Sci […]
It was so cute. Black in color and extremely smooth to the touch, we gazed in the adoration as it playfully traveled around the little blue plate. Our precious ferrofluid. We were proud. Today was essentially the very first time we got to “get our hands dirty”, this expression in our case […]
Today during our lecture we got to see a lot of different types of concepts for new inventions. This eventually led to our long discussion on the ethics of new technologies. There was a lot of talk about new inventions eventually leading to dangerous weapons or the destruction of the human race, but I also […]
Today in the lecture, a video was shown that presented a new idea to us. The idea of the double split, particle motion, and probability of patterns matter makes is easy to understand and predict at the meter level. But when minimized to quantum level, the physics change. The electrons travel through the slit in […]
Today, I witnessed one of the coolest things ever. No, I’m not talking about Harry Potter- that’s tomorrow-, but what I did see was ferrofluids in action. Ferrofluid is a liquid that becomes polarized in the presence of a magnet or a magnetic field. When it is magnetized, it will usually become cone-like prongs that […]
The lecture given by Rita and Gao this morning was centered around shape, in nature, in engineering, and in art. One random thing that I thought was cool during the lecture was learning that opals are clusters of nanospheres that reflect light and that their colors are resultant from shape differences, because I was always fascinated […]
The Ferrofluid lab today was very interesting. The process of making the ferrofluid took a lot of patience, but was worth it once it was complete and we got to see how it moved and changed due to the magnet. My group’s ferrofluid did not turn out quite like the other groups; it moved with […]