Thursday, July 29, 2004
How many volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica can dance on the head of a pin?
Having nearly completed two full weeks of nanotechnology research for my summer project, I have discovered a fascinating conversational phenomenon. Most of my teaching colleagues are not working over the summer. Those that are have been primarily focusing on summer school, the rest have left the city and are off on vacation doing their own thing. In any case, when they run into me after work, they ask me what's new, how things have been going, and so forth, and eventually somewhere between the idle smalltalk and the mindless chitchat the subject of my summer pursuits comes up. Well, I tell them I'm doing research at the university down the road, hoping beyond all hope that they won't ask any more questions, but the inevitable followup (for practical reasons, I suppose) comes soon after...
"Oh, research? On what?"
So I tell them nanotechnology, and that's where that phenomenon I mentioned rears its ugly head. The person with whom I'm conversing will hear the word, pause for a moment, run through their personal mental definitions of the subject based on past exposure, and then try to move the conversation along as fast as possible to areas where they feel more authoritiative. Generally this manifests as a cordial pleasantry: "Oh...nice." is a typical one. Or "Wow! How interesting." Few people ask for more details, but how many of them really care about the morphology of carbon nanotube composites as ascertained using FTIR and Raman spectroscopy? Maybe there's just too many syllables. Na-no-tech-no-lo-gy. Six . Can the human brain accept that many separate sounds in a single word while immersed in the context of a social situation? (All you would-be linguists out there should test this sometime by casually inserting words like praseodymium or phenomenology into your daily discourse.)
More likely, the issue is that people either do not know about nanotech or see no reason to care. I fear that a similar phenomenon will take place when I attempt to introduce them to the subject in the fall. (And before you ask why that is necessary, it's part of the requirements of the program...) To that end, I thought I would point out arguably the first and best introduction to the subject you will ever need, written by one of my personal scientific heroes, Richard Feynman. Feynman notes that we look at things all the time on the big scale, the macroscopic. We don't look at the details, the little things, the microscopic, the nanoscopic, and beyond. And the fascinating thing is that there are always new things to learn about the world, even at that tiny, inperceptible level beyond normal perception. Could this also be a commentary on how one might do better, not just in science, but also in life if one looks below the surface?
Perhaps...but if all the philosophies of the world drag you down...if you're feeling cut up and hurt, and worried that we've done everything and there's nothing new or wonderful to discover, remember what Feynman said...There's Plenty of Room At the Bottom.
Having nearly completed two full weeks of nanotechnology research for my summer project, I have discovered a fascinating conversational phenomenon. Most of my teaching colleagues are not working over the summer. Those that are have been primarily focusing on summer school, the rest have left the city and are off on vacation doing their own thing. In any case, when they run into me after work, they ask me what's new, how things have been going, and so forth, and eventually somewhere between the idle smalltalk and the mindless chitchat the subject of my summer pursuits comes up. Well, I tell them I'm doing research at the university down the road, hoping beyond all hope that they won't ask any more questions, but the inevitable followup (for practical reasons, I suppose) comes soon after...
"Oh, research? On what?"
So I tell them nanotechnology, and that's where that phenomenon I mentioned rears its ugly head. The person with whom I'm conversing will hear the word, pause for a moment, run through their personal mental definitions of the subject based on past exposure, and then try to move the conversation along as fast as possible to areas where they feel more authoritiative. Generally this manifests as a cordial pleasantry: "Oh...nice." is a typical one. Or "Wow! How interesting." Few people ask for more details, but how many of them really care about the morphology of carbon nanotube composites as ascertained using FTIR and Raman spectroscopy? Maybe there's just too many syllables. Na-no-tech-no-lo-gy. Six . Can the human brain accept that many separate sounds in a single word while immersed in the context of a social situation? (All you would-be linguists out there should test this sometime by casually inserting words like praseodymium or phenomenology into your daily discourse.)
More likely, the issue is that people either do not know about nanotech or see no reason to care. I fear that a similar phenomenon will take place when I attempt to introduce them to the subject in the fall. (And before you ask why that is necessary, it's part of the requirements of the program...) To that end, I thought I would point out arguably the first and best introduction to the subject you will ever need, written by one of my personal scientific heroes, Richard Feynman. Feynman notes that we look at things all the time on the big scale, the macroscopic. We don't look at the details, the little things, the microscopic, the nanoscopic, and beyond. And the fascinating thing is that there are always new things to learn about the world, even at that tiny, inperceptible level beyond normal perception. Could this also be a commentary on how one might do better, not just in science, but also in life if one looks below the surface?
Perhaps...but if all the philosophies of the world drag you down...if you're feeling cut up and hurt, and worried that we've done everything and there's nothing new or wonderful to discover, remember what Feynman said...There's Plenty of Room At the Bottom.
