PENTAX Optio WP
ƒ/6.6
6.3 mm
1/30
50
Puzzle Series: What is this, or what do you want it to be?
60 responses to “What’s That? (64)”
-
Bingo Ranjit. Wow – Fastest solution ever, I believe. I was wondering if someone would have seen this before….
The black material is a fluid.
More specifically, it’s a superparamagnetic fluid, otherwise known as a Ferrofluid, in a dish over a neodymium magnet.
The key to a funky fluid like this 10 nanometer magnetic particles in suspension. At that critical particle size, the particles’ magnetic fields balance with the surface tension of the liquid. So they don’t clump together, even in strong magnetic fields (in this case a N40 magnet).
Ferrofluids are used as heat sinks in loudspeakers and liquid seals around the fast-spinning drive shaft in a hard disk. They can also become an art form
-
I thought there was some radiactive potasium envolved in this…
(never seen this before, it would make a posh decor artifact -on a glass table, for example)
Felicitations Ranjit. You fast, man.
-
I once thought it would be fun to buy a few quarts of ferrofluid and make an array of computer controlled magnets.. to make, you know, art. Then I found out how much a quart of ferrofluid costs, ack!
Maybe the price has come down a little since then, but I’d guess not to the level of affordability by whimsical amateur artists..
-
One great thing about the puzzles here is that people are given the option of wishful thinking. If our scientific background is not at the sufficient level to be able to guess, we can just say "I want it to be…". That is wonderful because imagination is also essential in science.
So I want this to be a delicious and highly artistic piece of dark chocolate! Mium!
-
pfly – You can make it yourself… chemistry.about.com/od/demonstrationsexperiments/ss/liqui…
Ive seen some interesting interactive ferrofluid art at SIGGRAPH.
-
I just realize that billy is answering to you here on your comment at my/your sunset pic…
hehe… LOL!
He´s having such a party tonight it seems. Tonight and always. 😀
oh! billy, billy*************
;))
-
Ok, I just read the cool "Make your own" instructions and think it’s time to stir it up in here a little, so to speak!
Steve, as a proponent of the advance of nanotechnology, how do you seporate age old concoctions like this that we’ve created since time immemorial (also paint, soot/oil lubricants etc), which are just nanometeter sized particles that we’ve suspended in solution, from new creations of nanotechnology that involve inert nanoparticles in suspension. Or even just distinguishing new types of nanoparticle created by precipitation from nanometer sized particles that we’ve been making and using for a long time, just not called it nanotechnology?
-
God! Some people know all things.
For the rest, there’s MasterCard.[···]
It is nice to learn stuff from the specialists.
The specialists on stuff are the stuffologists, of course.
-
Imagine the conversations we could all have in person. We would all have a good laugh, interrupted by an interesting discussion. We would all have some knowledge and insight to share. A dinner conversation perhaps. Our centerpiece could be this magnetic fluid under a magnet instead of a light. It could be fun.
-
Poor Ali-Joe, he was a good alien. A pitty his hair style, tho. We´ll miss him. Melt in peace, bro.
Ben, It´s good to know you were OK when writing that!… wait. Is it? O_o
A genuine LOL moment:
Priceless.For the rest…
Hahahaha! 😉
-
And Steve, we did not notice that. Imagination is strong. It must be let free. The world opens up with imagination.
-
Ben: I was chortling at the Alieness. I did not have time for a thoughtful answer to your question before.
In short, the “nanotech” term has an interesting history, and it means different things to different people. There is not a clear time when nanotech, thermodynamics, or electronics suddenly appeared on the scene. Metal nanoparticles were used in ancient pottery glazes, carbon black in tires, zeolites in chemistry, and restriction enzymes in biotech, long before nanotech arrived as a broad descriptor.
Various descriptors in science have relevance at different levels of abstraction or from different perspectives. Nanotech, chemistry and physics are not mutually exclusive domains. Recall the age-old reductionist debates about whether “everything is really physics” at the core… or a computation. True, but that does not help a psychiatrist much today. Systems theory and higher order constructs will remain relevant because of the irreducible computational complexity embedded in many of the things we find interesting.
Nanotech exposes the core areas of overlap in the fundamental sciences, the place where quantum physics and quantum chemistry can cross-pollinate with ideas from the life sciences.
As we have recently blossomed in our ability to analyze and manipulate matter at the nanoscale (new tools and learning), we can learn more quickly about the interesting properties of matter that emerge only at the nanoscale. The ferrofluid here is an interesting example. The “magical” properties, at least from an artistic sense, are critically size dependent. Same for quantum dots.
There are various unique properties of matter that are expressed at the nanoscale and are quite foreign to our “bulk statistical” senses (we do not see single photons or quanta of electric charge; we feel bulk phenomena, like friction, at the statistical or emergent macroscale). At the nanoscale, the bulk approximations of Newtonian physics are revealed for their inaccuracy, and give way to quantum physics. Nanotechnology is more than a linear improvement with scale; everything changes. Quantum entanglement, tunneling, ballistic transport, frictionless rotation of superfluids, and several other phenomena have been regarded as “spooky” by many of the smartest scientists, even Einstein, upon first exposure.
For a simple example of nanotech’s discontinuous divergence from the “bulk” sciences, consider the simple aluminum Coke can. If you take the inert aluminum metal in that can and grind it down into a powder of 20-30nm particles, it will spontaneously explode in air. It becomes a rocket fuel catalyst. The energetic properties of matter change at that scale. The surface area to volume ratios become relevant, and even the inter-atomic distances in a metal lattice change from surface effects.
The history of humanity is that we use our tools and our knowledge to build better tools and expand the bounds of our learning. We are entering an era of exponential growth in our capabilities in biotech, molecular engineering and computing. The cross-fertilization of these formerly discrete domains compounds our rate of learning and our engineering capabilities across the spectrum. With the digitization of biology and matter, technologists from myriad backgrounds can decode and engage the information systems of biology as never before. And this inspires new approaches to bottom-up manufacturing, self-assembly, and layered complex systems development.
And that’s what excites me about nanotech – the new patterns of learning and the exploration of the edge and the frontiers of the unknown. It’s the human factors. More on that here, at my blog, and a particular dive into molecular electronics as the future of Moore’s Law.
-
*HOWL* Oh no, I was flitting this way and that last night too and hadn’t followed the link, otherwise it would have been obvious there was a joke that totally won the day! LOL! Oh, that’s a killer! No joy for him!
Thanks for the awesome explanation Steve, we’re certainly in for some wild times. Nanotech… Wonder how I get on this wagon… Hopefully an explanation like this can help people not fear all nano particles, though there’s reason for caution, vis a vis the buckyball fish study that showed risks to fish at some level.
-
Well spoken Steve, nanotech is going to bring together all the disciplines which are within a few levels of abstraction from fundamental physics… electronics, chemistry, molecular biology…
I remember the instant I grokked what nanotech was capable of doing, it was in one of my biology classes when the professor was going over microarrays, and gave a tangential lecture on how photolithography worked. The implications of using semiconductor manufacturing methods as a tool in biology hit me like a ton of bricks. Just recently a neuroscience lab I work with was discussing purchasing a real-time SEM/ion mill (capable of ion milling and imaging in low vacuums, used by semiconductor peeps), which gets really freaky real fast if you start thinking a few steps out.
-
oddwick: fast, freaky, and out of control? Do tell…
Ben: Bucky balls in the fish heads, making them insane? Well, sing along now: fish heads, fish heads, rolly-polly fish heads…
Dr. Demento was way ahead of his time.
Real story, for those interested. The fish head researcher writes:
"Considering the benefits of nanotech, I think it’s actually a great trade-off. Imagine if we can make more-efficient fuel cells and decrease our dependence on highly toxic fossil fuels," Oberdorster told Small Times in an e-mail. "But that doesn’t sell newspapers. Scary stuff like ‘the buckyballs will eat your brains’ sells much better. Doesn’t matter that it’s not correct, as long as it sells papers."
Good topics for the Nanobiz conference in a couple weeks…
-
Lol, oh those fish heads! *smacks his forhead* Oh I fell for that media hype. Yah, that’s the study. It bears more study, though… Hopefully it’s only bad in high concentrations. Though the fact that they were able to invade the dna strands and disrupt the code sounded kinda bad…
I hope your attendees are just late in committing Steve, looks kinda lonely at that conference at the moment.
-
May 17 – 19, NYC. A nice date to be at a nice place.
I wish I could be there. Just a bit later, on May 23. =/
-
Steve: In the classic science-fiction scenarios which gave rise to many concepts of nanotech and artificial intelligence, both of which have many advocates and resesarchers, there also exist concepts of uploading. However, biology and neuroscience have lagged substantially behind computer science and molecular physics, an nobody really takes the idea of uploading seriously.
Ok, many people dont take nanotech and AI seriously… but lets leave that for another discussion…
Amongst the many reasons biology has lagged behind is its lack of automation, the rate of discovery is pitifully slow and the tools limited. This is changing, with bioinformatics, systems biology, and so on. The ion milling / SEM combo I referred to would allow for rapid deconstruction of 3-D cell masses with enough resolution to start building digital versions of them.
Initially this inquiry is going to increase our understanding of cellular behavior, but after a while…
We are going start simulating the cells. The simulation will start for functional reasons, for example to predict how someones cancer cells will react to a particular chemo-cocktail. Back to neuroscience.
Once you have a good enough understanding of cellular function to simulate a cells behavior in (better than) real time, and you can deconstruct an existing body of cells with enough resolution to pick out all the functional parameters, we will be able to switch our computational substrates if we so desire.
This is a ways away, and is going to require quite a bit of work, but I believe it is feasible. I have started working in my spare time on some initial questions, for instance, the problem of determining connection strength between neurons, which will be important in any full simulation of neural function.
The machinery responsible for the connection strength is very small, and difficult or impossible to resolve with the observation equipment we have available today. However, the mitochondria and thier christae are resolvable, and a model of the energy output (based on christae surface area) and mito distribution can perhaps give information on how much energy each portion of the cell consumes (mito distribution is fairly fluid), which may inferentially describe the connection strength of a given synapse.
I make no claims this will be sufficient, but is simply one step towards a much larger and complex task.
A few labs are making serious headway into problems which will help bring uploading into the realm of possibility. William Denk from Germany and the Brain Networks Laboratory at Texas A&M are two such entities, though neither of them are working directly towards the goal. Here is a pdf of a recent pub from Denk’s group. thompson.stanford.edu/posters/neuroscience2004.pdf
-
Hey this is great! we have a very active group for scientists and members discuss puzzles in the group… that would be great if you can join us and post some of your puzzle pictures in our group… flickr.com/groups/sciencegroup/
See you!
-
Thanks Steve, I’m really happy that you joined us… If you want to introduce yourself to the group and see other members you can follow this link:
-
Impressive resemblance of the FSM an the fliud in Benjiman´s video… or maybe is sort of religious pareidolia?
sue you brought an excellent point here: "catchability". 🙂 What about this fluid? is it touchable or toxic? if touchable, how does it feel? I make a mental comparison to mercury… but may be wrong.
-
Damn. I must actually be some sort of apostate. I thought it was Madonna’s new bra.
-
Of course, I suppose we don’t REALLY need ferrofluids for this sort of crazy stuff.
Plain old corn starch will start doing pretty amazing shit at the right frequencies.
-
More weird science here: http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060515/full/060515-17.html
Makes me think of that living cornflour video…First to try it out and take a picture gets some shiny kudos.
Leave a Reply