The entities of this world goes deeply beyond what the eyes can see, there's a lot of things we can learn from studying the biotic components of the microscopic world and I believe I am right when I say that we have not even scratched the surface in knowing just how far the unseen world extends.
Beyond the microscopic layer of this world we have a nanoscopic layer which contains even more smaller entities than the microscopic layer.
Just like the word nano dictates nanoscopic matter is actually said to be a large number of times smaller than matter on the microscopic scale.
The study of organisms on the nano scale has given birth to an emerging but highly promising field of technology known as nanotechnology.
In this post I will be doing a basic introduction of the topic nanotechnology, telling you what it is all about and some of the potentials that it offers for the betterment and improvement of the quality of lives of humans.
What is Nanotechnology?
The term nanotechnology refers to any piece of technology that exists on a nano level and can be used to solve real world problems.
I think we need to really understand the basic concept of what I am trying to share and how it is.
Let's take a moment to ponder over the word nano.
I don't think it is easy to imagine just how small a nano unit of any entity is, taking a sheet of paper for example, a sheet of paper is said to be about seventy five thousand nanometres thick, now imagine just how thick a single nanometre unit will be.
The point of all my analysis is to point this out Nano is an extremely tiny entity and it is quite wonderful that solutions to certain problems could be derived from entities on that scale.
Why Nano
While conducting research for this article, I kept asking myself this question
Why would we as humans consider looking into something as tiny as nano in order to seek solutions?
From my findings though, the answer I could arrive at was this
Working with nano particles would ultimately allow us to experience life form an entirely new and relatively unfathomable dimension
Working with nano particles would allow us to be able to study the molecular structure of the molecular structure(pun intended) of micro particles.
That kind of insight would be very very valuable to people looking to pioneer new things across different fields and new insights can help to reshape the world around us.
Quantum Effects
Simply put, quantum effects are characteristics that are exhibited by a solid body or entity that have reduced greatly in size.
The reduction can be from a macro scale to a nanoscale, and it could go beyond that scale, one thing is for sure though if a body doesn't attain a nano state it most probabaly cannot exhibit a quantum effect.
Quantum effects are the attributes of an entity that dictates the behavior of that entity on a nanoscale.
Some common properties that might get changed and exhibited as quantum effects on a nanoscale include the
- melting point
- fluorescence
- conductivity and so on
Common real life use cases of nanotechnology
If you take a look around the society today, you will get to see different manifestations of nanotechnology on different tools and devices being used by humans today, some typical examples include
- The addition of titanium dioxide and zinc oxide to sunscreens in order to block UV radiation
- Using carbon nanofibers to reduce the flammability of furniture
- Used to make tennis balls retain their bounce for a much longer time
The list is quite extensive, but I am sure that you can see from the three examples I gave above that the use of nanoparticles and nanotechnology can help solve lots of problems in very many diverse ways.
A very notable use case I also like to add is the usage of nanogenerators that help us to convert our physical/kinetic activities to electrical energy that can do things like help us charge our phones while we are taking a walk.
The use-cases of nanotech is long, from medicine, to engineering, information technology and a lot more.
The impact of nanotechnology in computing and electronics
If we compare a computer that was built some 20 - 30 something years ago we can definitely see the tremendous impact nanotechnology has contributed to the advancement of computers and electronic products generally
A computer built in the 70s will be at least three to four times the size of a computer that was built in 2019, now let's compare that to the one that was built this year.
It is glaring that every year newly created computers are becoming smaller in size to the ones created the year before and they are even becoming more efficient and smarter with even longer lifespans, all of this are possible thanks to nanotechnology.
Through the novel ways discovered by engineers that enabled them to be able to greatly reduce the size of microprocessors, portable computers have now become a norm in today's society whereas about three decades ago a slower and less efficient computer would have filled an entire room.
Semicondunctor nanomembranes has made it possible for engineers to create strong, thin, bendable and foldable components for electronic devices like mobile phones thereby increasing the usability, visual beauty and quality of the devices.
Conclusion
So, given how much nanotechnology is being utilized by today's society, do you think or feel that we as a human race have exhausted the applications of nanotechnology in improving our lives.
Are we at that point where we probably might have to look for new avenues in which we can improve our lives even better than nanotechnology is doing for us?
Drop your opinions and comments below, thank you for reading.