Is it just me or has the term "nanotechnology" really inflated in meaning in recent years.<p>When I think of nanotechnology I think of actual designed automatons at nano scale, not anything just containing nm sized particles.
I made this comment yesterday in another thread, but it provides some of 'why' for the colors we see in stained glass.<p>> You've seen it before... Stained glass. Stained glass was one of the first use of nanoparticles and plasmonics to become commonplace. The wide range of colors that you can get in stained glass is due to the nano properties of the materials you add to the glass. The effect is due to surface plasmons - electric field waves that travel on the surface of conductors. Much like ocean waves, plasmons are created from light's electric field. They bounce back and forth, and since they are only permitted on the surface of a material, there are limits on what waves can exist. This is what gives them the weird properties - the size and shape determine the optical properties.<p>On another tangent (this one's pretty cool) - since you can tune the properties of these nanoparticles, you can make them respond in a specific way. Let's say we have a cancer cell that we want to kill, and only that cancer cell should die. We can create nanoparticles that bond with that cancer cell, and only that cancer cell. But how do we kill it? We can tune the absorption spectrum of the nanoparticle to absorb infrared light - light that is transparent to the human body. We create a small heater that absorbs tons of the input energy, while keeping the rest of the area cool. Localized heating destroys the nearby cancer cell.<p>Plasmonics are really cool - <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasmon" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasmon</a>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasmonic_Nanoparticles" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasmonic_Nanoparticles</a>
Part of me immediately scoffs at the definition of "nanotechnology" assumed by the article, but this plays to something that's been bothering me of late - to what degree does humanity actually innovate/invent, vs. rubbing things together and seeing what happens?<p>Cooking: I put this plant in and set fire under it and it tastes good.<p>Chemistry: I put these two substances together and they explode.<p>Nanotechnology*: I put tiny ground-up bits of gold in this and it turns red.<p>This may be waaaaay side-tracking, but at what point do we step back and realize that everything we do consists of just... writing down what happens with different combinations of things? And today's nanotechnology is just the result of tons upon tons of writing down things like the linked article's results and then adding whatever the next logical(?) step might be?<p>(Makes me think the Asheron's Call spell research back in the day captured all of human ingenuity boiled down)
This isn't the first time nanotechnology has been connected with an ancient civilization.[1]<p>It's always interesting to find out which areas ancient civilizations were truly advanced in. We're still not 100% sure how Greek fire was made.<p>---<p>[1] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damascus_steel" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damascus_steel</a>
If the artwork depicts a man being punished for crimes against the god of wine, and the contents affect the color, wouldn't it be cool if this was used to detect poisons, similar to what drinksavvy is doing for date rape drugs?
I will stand by my theory that the ancients knew a whole lot more about a whole lot more than we currently give them credit for. I'd wager given the lack of understanding we have about things like Stonehenge, how the pyramids were actually built, megalithic structures found under the sea, the Easter Island statues etc. that they knew a whole lot more than we think.
OK, so they understood correlation and causality as applied to a particular use case. "Hey, we ground up the pigments real fine one day, and this nifty effect popped out."<p>But to imply that they had any understanding of "nanotechnology", or even modern optics is well -- typical sloppy minded, modern science journalism.
Romans did love their mixins: <a href="http://newscenter.lbl.gov/news-releases/2013/06/04/roman-concrete/" rel="nofollow">http://newscenter.lbl.gov/news-releases/2013/06/04/roman-con...</a>
Are they suggesting we can make Nano Crystals/Quantum Dots simply by grinding? .... wouldn't a mill have to be impossibly flat for this method to work?
Not mentioned in this article, but perhaps of interest, is that this goblet is currently on loan, and on display, at the Art Institute of Chicago. It is quite neat and I recommend going to see it if you're in the area.