Nano. What? Where? I think I missed it…
Really bloody small. Really. Tiny. More than tiny. Too tiny in fact. Too tiny to see or even be seen directly. A nanometer is a billionth (1,000,000,000th) of a meter, and the human eye can't see much below 10,000 nanometers. It's hard to guage something as tiny as a nanoparticle – as hard to comprehend as the (possibly infinite) enormity of the universe. "To put things in perspective, if the world were scaled down so that people averaged 100 nanometers tall, the Earth would be about 76 cm in diameter" (from http://www.nanotechproject.org/topics/nano101/intr…).
So from an artist perspective I'm wondering how I'm going to get to grips with something that can't be gripped unless you own some nano-tweezers, had nano fingers to squeeze them and special nano eyes that could see things that can be smaller than a lightwave. The technologies the scientists use to 'see' the work they are doing with nanoparticles are advanced precision hardware and software systems that 'feel' the particles and show either a digitised representation of them, or simply a screed of numbers to be deciphered. More computers than chemicals.
It also raises the question of how much scientists trust the equipment they use; how far could a minor software bug derail research findings? One small error in anyone of the thousands (probably more) of functions called in one of the software applications would be pretty hard to notice. In the normal scale world a real bug in the lab would completely mess up results, but they are easy to spot (they are ones that don't bother with lab coats and plastic overshoes).
While I'm browsing around peeking in the clean rooms and looking at the labs, I'm wondering how much job satisfaction you would get from working with such non-physical things, things that are on the edge of theory and reality. But also how exciting each step would be when you validate a paper-based assumption with a real world experiment. It must be addictive to push it to the next level, is this why many scientists are so dedicated and immersed in their work – the 'it-must-be-just-around-the-corner' carrot?
"I looked around but couldn't see. My eyes said no, they said to me "We will not zoom we will not phroooom we cannot nanoooom inside this room, from this perspective it will not be, those particles will never be clear to me (or me – for there are two of these eyes you see). There is no way we will, by looking or cooking or crooking or hooking be able to focus on those tiny things. Bring me some tech and then we'll begin."
