Last night
we went down into Westwood to see the midnight showing of Harry Potter and the half-blood prince. The first thing we noticed was the massive line wrapping two blocks. Everyone went into the movie expecting to see everything from the book on the big screen. For this reason most people came out disappointed because it would take a twenty hour-long film to include the details from the novel. Anyway besides the entertainment portion of the film I noticed many things that could be related to nanotechnology. For example, Harry uses an invisibility cloak to hide from his enemy Draco Malfoy. Even though being invisible seems impossible, in the future nan
otechnology may help us to achieve something similar to this magical fantasy. In fact, the Japanese have begun to create a material that may soon have the ability to turn things invisible. It works by bending the visible light that hits the object, around the object and making the light continue on a linear path. We returned to Hedrick after the m
ovie and were able to catch up on five hours of sleep. That afternoon we were taken to the physics building on campus to experience something called an anechoic chamber. This is basically a room lined with foam and insulation resulting in a 100% soundproof and 100% pitch-black room. In this room we experienced an overall eerie feeling and we even could here our own bodies. Another thing I found interesting was that when we were in the chamber, we created energy by peeling scotch tape off the role. Across the hall a team of scientists had been studying the properties of the tape to try to harness its energy and hopefully use it as a fuel source.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anechoic_chamber
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/08/080812-invisibility-cloak.html
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/harry_potter_and_the_half_blood_prince/
http://www.productwiki.com/light-tape/
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12961080/