I don’t recall any of those “wonders of capitalism” postings lately, so here’s one, scanned in from the November 2002 issue of Prospect (paper version so no link), referred to in an article about nanotechnology (“The Science of the Tiny”) by Michael Gross of Birkbeck College, London.
I’ve been hearing for years about how wonderful nanotechnology is just about to be. But where’s the stuff? Where are the nanotechnologically produced products that we can buy? In the shops? Says Gross:
… There is at least one that you can buy already. It is the self-cleaning window. It uses a combination of two clever molecular tricks. First, it contains a catalyst that uses the energy of light to oxidise common kinds of dirt, to convert them into smaller, more soluble molecules that wash away with rain water. At this point, the second trick comes in. Ordinary glass is fairly water-repellent (hydrophobic), which means that water does not cover it smoothly, but tends to form droplets. The surface of self-cleaning glass, however, is coated in molecules that attract water and encourage it to spread out. So, instead of sitting around as drops which leave drying spots when they evaporate, the rain will cover the surface evenly, dissolve what the photocatalyst made of the dirt, and run off. Simple. Yet it would not be possible without molecular design on the nanometre scale.
I don’t need it. Correction: I don’t want it. But I’m a big fan of skyscrapers, and skyscrapers are going to want this stuff by the square mile, and presumably they already do. I assume that technophiliac Samizdatistas like Dale Amon and Russell Whitaker have known of these magic window panes for years but this is the first time I’ve heard about them, and I’m impressed.
I’m not au fait with this particular product, but I’m certainly familiar with the approach.
I appreciate Brian’s reference to me as a “technophiliac Samizdatan”; I’ll be adding the title to my CV.
I should mention for those who’ve heard the term nanotechnology bandied about that the term as applied in the M. Gross excerpt refers, apparently, to a device which works at the nanoscale. That’s interesting, and worth a mention.
However, the really interesting aspect of “nanotechnology” is molecular-scale manufacture of systems ranging from the nanoscopic to the macroscopic, from cell repair microbes to suspension bridges. Nanotechnology is not only product: it’s also process.
I think you may find the work of Zyvez in Texas to be of interest.
Oh, and the entire text of the seminal lay exposition on the subject, Engines of Creation is (and has been since I adapted it 6 years ago) available on the Foresight Institute web site.
Although not nano tech, Resesearch Frontiers Inc. are on the verge of marketing really smart windows.
They are REFR on the NASDAQ if memory serves.
Check out the credit/thanks page in the front of Engines of Creation and see how many names you recognize 😉
Some readers might be amused, as many nano-enthusiasts describe what happens at the molecular scale in terms of nano-metres [so based on a division of the Paris rod], to learn that the central component in materials like fullerene [‘buckyballs’, ‘buckytubes’] is carbon, and a nano-foot [that is, one billionth of a 12-inch foot] is twice the diameter of a carbon atom.
So every carbon atom is six nano-inches in diameter. Surely a sign from The Great Assembler!
This sounds great! even greater would be not making buildings out of frikking glass in the first place. every time some halfhead explodes a car bomb or the wind blows too hard ( note to Americans, you call this a tornado or typhoon or something ) lots of people are hurt by broken glass and the building’s contents are exposed to the elements. Also these glass buildings act like another glass building ( brace yourself for a shock, highly paid architects ) the greenhouse, they are a pain to keep at a reasonable temperature. I have been told that the great king Ramses had a huge concrete and glass tower block built next to the pyramids, but there was nothing left of it within a hundred years.
Zack: we also call them “twisters” (AKA tornadoes). Typhoons, by the way, are a maritime phenomenon, usually affecting island and coastal communities (though not uncommonly moving deeply inland). Tornadoes are sometimes found embedded in hurricanes, but are much more often the endpoint of inland mammatocumulus cloud development.
Next weather report on the hour, every hour…
Is that the same as the wind blowing hard or not, I can’t tell?