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Nanotechnology design-of-the-month reaches 25,000 precisely-placed atoms

Our friends at Nanorex have done it again. You really should click through to see this new nanotech design in action. Click on the design to make it move:

This worm drive assembly designed by K. Eric Drexler, Josh Hall, Ninad Sathaye and Mark Sims includes 11 components totalling 25,374 atoms. The animations below have been created from simulation results using NanoEngineer-1 Alpha 7, taking just over 370 hours to complete on a Dell laptop running WindowsXP. It is the largest model ever simulated with NanoEngineer-1.

There are (at least) three types of nano images: (1) images of nanoscale objects that have been built, (2) designs which have not yet been built but are believed to be stable in principle, and (3) artist’s conceptions which may not be scientifically accurate. This is a great example of #2. —Christine

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 22nd, 2006 at 5:10 PM and is filed under Artificial Molecular Machines, Molecular Nanotechnology, Nanotechnology, Productive Nanosystems, Research. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

5 Responses to “Nanotechnology design-of-the-month reaches 25,000 precisely-placed atoms”

  1. bob snyder Says:
    August 23rd, 2006 at 1:18 AM

    If nanotechnology can produce the perfect magnetic shield, you will own the world!!

  2. Matt Arnold Says:
    August 23rd, 2006 at 7:59 AM

    I’ve frequently wondered which colors traditionally represent which chemical elements in images and animations such as these. But so far my web searches haven’t turned up a list.

  3. Christine Peterson Says:
    August 23rd, 2006 at 2:43 PM

    Here is a short list from http://www.schoolmasters.com/chemkits3.html:
    carbon (black),
    hydrogen (yellow),
    chlorine (green),
    nitrogen (blue),
    oxygen (red),
    bromine (orange),
    iodine (purple)
    Hope this helps! Maybe someone else will dig up a longer version. —Christine

  4. Jonathan Says:
    August 23rd, 2006 at 6:38 PM

    I think it would be neat to have an article that talks about any progress that engineers have made in any kind of mechanochemistry (other than AFMs, etc). I haven’t seen anything around that talks about that. Where do you think we are going to see the first real results of these early systems showing up and in what timeframes?

    =)

  5. Mark Sims Says:
    August 24th, 2006 at 10:04 PM

    Regarding standard atom (element) colors, I asked the same thing 2 years ago when we started developing NanoEngineer-1 (NE1). I discovered that there is no official standard, but most programs (not kits) use the following default colors for these 5 elements:

    hydrogen (white)
    carbon (gray)
    nitrogen (blue)
    oxygen (red)
    sulfur (yellow)

    Colors for other elements vary widely.

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