Speaker 1: Welcome to tex Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland, executive producer with I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and I love all things tech, and today we're
Speaker 1: going to look at a tech Stuff classic episode that
Speaker 1: published back in February two thirteen. This one has the
Speaker 1: title tech Stuff Plays with carbon Nanotubes. Yes, carbon nanotubes
Speaker 1: the stuff of the future that is persistently the stuff
Speaker 1: of the future and never seems to be the stuff
Speaker 1: of right now. I mean that's not entirely fair. We've
Speaker 1: done a lot of work in carbon nanotubes and there's
Speaker 1: been a lot of progress made, but it's been one
Speaker 1: of those futuristic things for a long time now. So
Speaker 1: let's listen back on two thousand thirteen Jonathan joined by
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogelball as we talk about carbon nanotubes. First, we
Speaker 1: thought that we would talk a little bit about why
Speaker 1: carbon is cool, because um so so it's it's an element,
Speaker 1: incredibly uh popular element here on the planet Earth. It
Speaker 1: is way up there, it is. It is in fact,
Speaker 1: the fourth most abundant element in the universe by mass
Speaker 1: um after hydrogen, helium, and oxygen and the second most
Speaker 1: abundant element in the human body. Yeah yeah, we are
Speaker 1: what is known as carbon based life forms. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: And all of this is made possible because carbon atoms
Speaker 1: are these nifty little hexagons made with six electrons um.
Speaker 1: They they bond very easily with one another. Actually, if
Speaker 1: they bond in a lattice structure, which is a hexagonal structure,
Speaker 1: do you have a sheet of that? So you've got
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of carbon atoms that are molecularly bonded
Speaker 1: to one another in this hexagon pattern. Here in the South.
Speaker 1: I like to call it chicken wire. Anyone who anyone
Speaker 1: who lives in any story a rural environment who has
Speaker 1: seen chicken wire, that's kind of what a sheet of
Speaker 1: these carbon atoms and molecular structure look like. We call
Speaker 1: that sheet graphing. So let's say say you've got this
Speaker 1: sheet of graphing, which is essentially two dimensional, right, because
Speaker 1: adams don't really have a lot of thickness to them,
Speaker 1: so they are you're you're talking about with and length,
Speaker 1: you're not talking about depth. And I mean that's you know,
Speaker 1: one atom thick that's thin enough to call it two dimensional. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: So you've got the sheet of graphing. Let's say, then
Speaker 1: you roll the graphing into a I don't know, burrito
Speaker 1: like structure. It's not necessarily going to be filled with
Speaker 1: cheesy beany goodness. You know, I kind of want a
Speaker 1: carbon nano to burrito now. I am craving burritos like
Speaker 1: you wouldn't believe. But but no, No, that's what we
Speaker 1: call a carbon nanotube. You take that sheet of graphing,
Speaker 1: this this hexagonal molecular structure of carbon, and this is
Speaker 1: just carbon you and you roll it up and that's
Speaker 1: carbon nanotube. But you know, carbon is kind of an
Speaker 1: amazing thing anyway, because carbon can take on so many
Speaker 1: different forms, right right, Yeah, I mean it's what diamonds
Speaker 1: and graphite are both made of, and it's totally different
Speaker 1: a little little bit. I mean, you know that's you've got.
Speaker 1: You've got the hardest substance, the hearts, natural substance known
Speaker 1: on Earth, right, and then you've got what you put
Speaker 1: in pencils. Essential So yeah, something soft enough that paper
Speaker 1: is paper, paper is its match, right right? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So so this is something that we call allotropes. Now,
Speaker 1: an allotrope you know, you're like, what the heck is that? Well,
Speaker 1: if you if you've studied chemistry, you know. So I
Speaker 1: apologize to all the chemists out there who are screaming
Speaker 1: at me because I'm assuming they don't know what an
Speaker 1: allotrop It's okay, I know. You know. Also, y'all can
Speaker 1: go just get a soda for the next about So,
Speaker 1: an allotrope is any of two or more physical forms
Speaker 1: in which an element can exist. So you we have
Speaker 1: these elements that can exist in different physical forms, and
Speaker 1: carbon is a perfect example. Lauren was just pointing out
Speaker 1: diamond versus versus a graph fite. So you've got these
Speaker 1: two very different kinds of forms, but they're still the
Speaker 1: same basic element. Uh well, carbon nanotubes are very similar
Speaker 1: in that way. We'll talk a bit more about the
Speaker 1: different properties that carbon nano tubes can have and why
Speaker 1: they can have different properties, but we need to lead
Speaker 1: up to that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Well this entire carbon
Speaker 1: nanotube business was discovered in by Sumio Ijima, I believe
Speaker 1: is the way that you pronounce it. Um apologies to
Speaker 1: my Japanese teacher. Um. Although research into into creating these
Speaker 1: sheets of graphine stretches back into the nineteen fifties. Um,
Speaker 1: and all of these are there. They're actually two processes
Speaker 1: for making them. One of them I'm not extremely familiar with,
Speaker 1: and it's written all the way down at the bottom
Speaker 1: of my notes, so we're going to cover that one later.
Speaker 1: That's a wet application, the general way of making carbon
Speaker 1: nano tubes as a RYE application, and you thermally strip
Speaker 1: carbon atoms off of carbon bearing compounds. Wow, that sounds complicated,
Speaker 1: or at least violent and violent. Violent at an atomic level,
Speaker 1: that is extremely violent. Yeah, and so this is well,
Speaker 1: this is what produces these these extremely these atom thin
Speaker 1: sheets UM that that you then roll into a tiny
Speaker 1: tiny tube and by tiny tiny, I mean about a
Speaker 1: nanometer or two in diameter UM and just you know,
Speaker 1: just to just to recover this nanimeter is one millionth
Speaker 1: of a millimeter, so it's one billionth of a meter,
Speaker 1: So it's small, right, And then you at least for
Speaker 1: the longest time, Uh, these these carbon nanotubes could be
Speaker 1: at most about a millimeter long. Now that's changed recently, right, right,
Speaker 1: But I mean even a millimeter long is pretty impressive
Speaker 1: because that's that's a million times as long as it is.
Speaker 1: Why that's I mean, that aspect ratio is incredible. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's one of the things that really made carbon nanotubes
Speaker 1: a fascinating thing to look at, because you're thinking, if
Speaker 1: you're looking at the dimensions, by one dimension, this is
Speaker 1: incredibly tiny, and by the other, in comparison, it is ginormous.
Speaker 1: I mean, think about the technical term. Think if you
Speaker 1: saw a bus that was a million times longer than
Speaker 1: it was wide or or or long cat. If long
Speaker 1: CAT were so long that it were a million times longer.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you Lauren for bringing it directly into
Speaker 1: an analogy that is relatable to everybody. I was going
Speaker 1: with the bus, What was I thinking? I was mostly
Speaker 1: thinking I would not want to be behind that bus.
Speaker 1: I bet they would make really wide right turns. Like
Speaker 1: we're on we're on the internet, Okay, we if we
Speaker 1: don't incorporate cats into the conversation, we're going to be fired, right,
Speaker 1: We're lost. But anyway, Yes, this is one of those
Speaker 1: amazing properties of of carbon ano tubes. The other thing
Speaker 1: that I find really interesting is that carbon ano tubes
Speaker 1: will have very different properties depending up on how they
Speaker 1: are rolled. Because it's mostly the direction of the role.
Speaker 1: So it really is the how that those hexagons I
Speaker 1: was talking about in the graphing, how they are aligned
Speaker 1: in comparison to the actual role of this sheet. Uh.
Speaker 1: And depending on how you do it, it can behave
Speaker 1: like uh, like a metal, so a conductor, so it
Speaker 1: will conduct electricity. But if you roll it a different way,
Speaker 1: like at a slightly different angle. And if you guys
Speaker 1: are having trouble visualizing this, just take a sheet of
Speaker 1: paper and roll it along the short side, or roll
Speaker 1: it along the long side, or roll it along the diagonal.
Speaker 1: These are all the different kinds of ways you can
Speaker 1: roll sheets of graphing and you get different properties. So
Speaker 1: you roll it one way, it acts metallic like a conductor,
Speaker 1: so it's conducting electricity. You roll it another way it
Speaker 1: acts like a semiconductor, which means that in some situations
Speaker 1: it does conduct electricity and in other situations it acts
Speaker 1: as an insulator. This gives it an incredible flexibility as
Speaker 1: far as applications are concerned. You can use it in
Speaker 1: all sorts of electronic applications, which we will get to
Speaker 1: a little bit when. Yeah, and it also depends on
Speaker 1: what kind of you can roll them into all kinds
Speaker 1: of different interesting shapes using using an atomic force microscopes
Speaker 1: also called scanning force microscopes, which are which are things
Speaker 1: that have these these tiny bitty little nanimeter probes on
Speaker 1: the end of them, and you can use them to
Speaker 1: basically poke around a nanotube until it's the right shape,
Speaker 1: the right shape for your process. This is pretty amazing.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're talking about manipulating things that are just
Speaker 1: slightly larger than the atomic scale, right, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: something that's really difficult to to visualize. Now, there there
Speaker 1: are some neat ways of kind of getting an idea
Speaker 1: of how precise we can be these days. My favorite,
Speaker 1: we've talked about it on the Tech Stuff podcast in
Speaker 1: the past. My favorite illustration is that ibm UH several
Speaker 1: years ago used a similar type of microscope to manipulate
Speaker 1: individual atoms to spell out I B M on a
Speaker 1: silicon wafer. That is delightful. Yeah, so you're talking about
Speaker 1: being able to when when we're able to manipulate individual atoms,
Speaker 1: then obviously this is we've got this level of precision
Speaker 1: that to me is mind boggling. I mean, it's really exciting.
Speaker 1: But some of the other properties of carbon nanotubes is
Speaker 1: again depending upon the way you you you roll these tubes,
Speaker 1: it can be an incredibly strong material, stronger and lighter
Speaker 1: than say, steal, hundreds of times stronger than steel. Yeah,
Speaker 1: according to to to some Well, you know, here's the thing.
Speaker 1: There's a theoretical limit to the tensile strength of carbon nanotubes,
Speaker 1: and then there's the limit that we've actually seen. Right,
Speaker 1: and as we get better about creating nanotubes than those
Speaker 1: two numbers get closer together. But in general, in the
Speaker 1: experimental phase you might not see as incredible a display
Speaker 1: of strength as you would aspect when you start running
Speaker 1: the numbers via you know, mathe But for an example,
Speaker 1: you could take a a cable that if you were
Speaker 1: to cut the cable and look at and measure the
Speaker 1: diameter you're talking about like a a one millimeter diameter
Speaker 1: of this cable, nanotube of that size could hold approximately
Speaker 1: six thousand fo or fourteen thousand pounds. And that's and
Speaker 1: and and a millimeter, I mean, that's that's what like
Speaker 1: like about the width of a human hair. Well, a
Speaker 1: millimeter would be one millionth of a nano, one million
Speaker 1: times the size of a nanometer. That really brings it
Speaker 1: into perspective one million that I ruined my own joke.
Speaker 1: To be fair, I'm not working on very much sleep, right,
Speaker 1: I think I think a millimeter is about it's about
Speaker 1: the size of a head of a pin. Actually, the
Speaker 1: hair a human hair is like a few hundred thousand nanometers,
Speaker 1: depending upon the person's hair, because human hair comes in
Speaker 1: a but but yes, I mean, the point being that
Speaker 1: you're talking about an incredibly thin cable that could hold
Speaker 1: an amazing amount of weight considering the dimensions of the cable. Now,
Speaker 1: granted again, this is theoretical, you know, when we talk
Speaker 1: about real carbon nanotubes and the real experiences we've had,
Speaker 1: it's a little bit different from that. But the potential
Speaker 1: there is to build certain types of materials, certain types
Speaker 1: of products using this stuff that can have fantastic properties.
Speaker 1: And just to be clear, we're saying stronger than steel.
Speaker 1: That's really mostly tension strength when you're talking about um
Speaker 1: other types of impact. Because carbon nanotubes are hollow, they
Speaker 1: can buckle. So let's say that you have just somehow
Speaker 1: you have managed to make one carbon nanotube that's you know,
Speaker 1: Lauren Height, and then you have a force impacting that
Speaker 1: along the side of the carbon nanotube, so it's not
Speaker 1: pulling on the nanotube, it's pushing against the side right
Speaker 1: into the chewy center. Right. Well, that chewy center might
Speaker 1: just buckle and the carbon nanotube bends and you think, well,
Speaker 1: that was But it's the same sort of thing like
Speaker 1: saying the strength of a rope. The strength of the
Speaker 1: rope is how much weight it can pull, not pushing
Speaker 1: against the rope in the middle of the middle of
Speaker 1: the rope. It doesn't make any sense. And let's be
Speaker 1: pulped taught, And that's a whole different version of physics
Speaker 1: that we would need to get into right right exactly.
Speaker 1: But but that's one of the other things to to
Speaker 1: keep in mind is that even though it is an
Speaker 1: incredibly strong material and theoretically one of the strongest materials
Speaker 1: we've encountered, uh, that's only in specific use cases. It's
Speaker 1: not like you would build a carbon nanotube wall and
Speaker 1: it would be immune to everything else known to man, right,
Speaker 1: although I'm sure there are ways you could do that,
Speaker 1: like maybe with some sort of woven fabric made out
Speaker 1: of carbon nanotubes, but an individual carbonanitude it's not the case.
Speaker 1: Let's take a moment to thank our sponsor, and now
Speaker 1: we'll return to our regularly scheduled tech stuff podcast. Alright, so, um,
Speaker 1: so there are there are many many applications that these
Speaker 1: nanotubes can be used for. Like, like we mentioned before,
Speaker 1: their engineers are looking at incorporating them into building materials,
Speaker 1: perhaps for vehicles. I mean, imagine if you had a
Speaker 1: vehicle that was six times lighter than than the cars
Speaker 1: that are running around today, right that and that. If
Speaker 1: you're wondering why you would want a light car, one
Speaker 1: reason is that it means that you don't have to
Speaker 1: use as much fuel to push that car around. A
Speaker 1: lighter car means less work for the engine to do.
Speaker 1: If if the engine has to do less work, it
Speaker 1: theoretically needs less fuel. So we could end up with
Speaker 1: cars that are still gas powered but end up requiring
Speaker 1: far less fuel have greater efficiency. Or we could of
Speaker 1: course use it in other like hybrid cars and you
Speaker 1: know you're again you're placing or even electric vehicles or
Speaker 1: something like this airplane or yeah, yeah, there's some great
Speaker 1: airplanes would be fantastic because, as anyone has pointed out,
Speaker 1: if you're talking about someone who's who's green conscious and
Speaker 1: they're trying very hard to live a green friendly life style.
Speaker 1: They basically need to avoid airplanes entirely. One flight on
Speaker 1: a plane and you have just like you know, you're
Speaker 1: essentially erasing any good you're doing with your entire green
Speaker 1: life at home. And that's that's just a hard reality
Speaker 1: of what it takes to move. Yeah, so that's a
Speaker 1: great example. You actually pointed out something else. A future
Speaker 1: use of this technology could be something that we did
Speaker 1: an episode of tech Stuff about a few years ago.
Speaker 1: Space elevators. Space elevators. Yeah, these are these are really
Speaker 1: nifty things. If you guys have not heard of this, um,
Speaker 1: you you should have by now, you're a bad tech
Speaker 1: stuff listener. But that's okay, because you can fix that.
Speaker 1: I still love you, Yes, yes, no, No, I just
Speaker 1: I had to. I had to moderated of Facebook thread
Speaker 1: the other day. I am being the social media here.
Speaker 1: It has stuff works. I'm if people are are being
Speaker 1: jerks on Facebook, they I'm the one who has to
Speaker 1: clean it up. So don't be jerks on Facebook, y'all. Um.
Speaker 1: It's a very special episode of tech Stuff, But no elevator,
Speaker 1: space space elevator. No, well, I mean, okay, the point
Speaker 1: of my story here, I've start started to stutter. Excellent. Um,
Speaker 1: the point of my of my story was that you
Speaker 1: shouldn't be a jerk on Facebook. Now, No, I had
Speaker 1: a point. My point, well, let me let me let
Speaker 1: me at least explain what space elevator is. How about that?
Speaker 1: Because I'm dying here, I can I can at least
Speaker 1: give it a shot. So let's say. Let's let's say
Speaker 1: you put an object into orbit, stationary orbit around the Earth. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it has to be uh, it's the object is
Speaker 1: sort of a counterweight, essentially, So you've got a counterweight
Speaker 1: orbiting the Earth, and the thing connecting the counterweight to
Speaker 1: Earth is a very strong cable, and you use the elevator,
Speaker 1: which is essentially attached to the cable, to transport in anything. Really,
Speaker 1: it could be people, although cargo would be a lot
Speaker 1: easier than people, because with people you gotta worry about,
Speaker 1: I don't know, keeping them alive and stuff, moving them
Speaker 1: to Yeah, I guess if we're moving dead people, it's okay.
Speaker 1: So if we want to have a space cemetery out there,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't mind that, except that I actually plan on
Speaker 1: donating my body to science fiction. Uh so the the Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have an elevator that has this counterweight out there. Okay,
Speaker 1: you're just pick up that. Now I'm with you. I'm
Speaker 1: with you, and keep going so the elevator can travel
Speaker 1: up the cable. The the nice thing about this is
Speaker 1: the based on this design, you might be using things
Speaker 1: like lasers to actually power this elevator. Uh. The elevator
Speaker 1: wouldn't have things on it like thrusters, like rocket thrusters,
Speaker 1: the way we would with a a traditional rocket ship
Speaker 1: to get stuff into space. It would mean that it
Speaker 1: would take uh less energy in theory to deliver payloads
Speaker 1: to utter space. You wouldn't have to worry about problems
Speaker 1: like uh catastrophic failure when you're talking about propellants that
Speaker 1: can be incredibly dangerous under the wrong conditions. And also,
Speaker 1: I mean, just like we were saying, if you if
Speaker 1: you take one airline flight, you're basically erasing the entire
Speaker 1: good that you've done on your carbon footprint all year.
Speaker 1: You know, the cost of launch in terms of fuel
Speaker 1: and and just people and manpower is is ten thousand
Speaker 1: dollars per pound. That's per kilogram that's a bunch. So
Speaker 1: you've got you've got this need to find a cheaper
Speaker 1: way to get stuff into utter space if in fact
Speaker 1: we want to do that thing that which we do,
Speaker 1: I mean I do, yeah, because there's lots of fascinating
Speaker 1: stuff out there. So space elevators are a good way
Speaker 1: of doing that. But one of the problems is that
Speaker 1: how do you create a cable that's going to be
Speaker 1: strong enough and small enough to make this a reality?
Speaker 1: And carbonano tubes might very well be the way that
Speaker 1: we solve that problem. Now, for a long time everyone said, okay,
Speaker 1: well here's the barrier, the barriers that we've got. We've
Speaker 1: got this exactly. Yeah, yeah, we can make carbonano tubes,
Speaker 1: but there are a millimeter long at most, and so
Speaker 1: we don't have to make a whole bunch of them
Speaker 1: and tie the ends together teeny little bows in order
Speaker 1: to make a big, long one for the cable, but
Speaker 1: relatively ineffective. Yeah, so we'll get into some some new
Speaker 1: forms of manufacturer that have made that less of a problem.
Speaker 1: But even now we're still talking about this is science
Speaker 1: fiction as far as we're concerned. It's it's feasible, but
Speaker 1: not possible. Given our technology right now, right now, But
Speaker 1: there are other applications that we could use carbonanotubes and
Speaker 1: including things like, uh like conductive plastics, So we can
Speaker 1: make electronics out of plastic materials and run carbonano tubes
Speaker 1: through the plastic, creating them a conductive layer, so that
Speaker 1: you can actually make products even small more than they
Speaker 1: are today. So instead of having a casing that is
Speaker 1: covering up the electronics, the casing would be part of
Speaker 1: the electronics. You could have you know, a credit card,
Speaker 1: thin smartphone. Yeah, yeah, that would that would turn More's
Speaker 1: law right on its point he had. Yeah, yeah, there's
Speaker 1: some pretty neat stuff that could potentially happen. We also
Speaker 1: could have things like smart fabrics, so clothing that could
Speaker 1: have carbon nanotubes in it that might do things like
Speaker 1: monitor conditions like it could it could end up powering
Speaker 1: various sensors. This would obviously be very important in uniforms
Speaker 1: like space suits or first responders outfits for things like firefighters,
Speaker 1: things like that, you know, things that that could benefit
Speaker 1: from this. But even from a more consumer standpoint, we
Speaker 1: could even have I don't know, like clothing that tells
Speaker 1: you how active you are and whether or not you're
Speaker 1: getting enough exercise and don't even have to put on
Speaker 1: a speedometer a little Nike fit wristband, right, you'd be fine.
Speaker 1: You just you know, you put on your clothing, and
Speaker 1: that tells you or may say things like, for Heaven's sake,
Speaker 1: wash me. You know that that goes out to everyone
Speaker 1: I went to college with. There other clothing applications. I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe not so much for daily use, but but carbon
Speaker 1: antotubes could be used to create some really terrific body armor.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, sure, yeah. Again, we're talking about the incredible strength,
Speaker 1: and if it's woven the right way, you're talking about
Speaker 1: something that could have a great applications for anyone who
Speaker 1: might be in military or law enforcement to provide a
Speaker 1: level of protection that is really unheard of at this point.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've got some great technology out there to
Speaker 1: keep people protected, but this would be a step of
Speaker 1: a huge step above that. Hey guys, twenty nineteen, Johnathan again,
Speaker 1: you know the one you hate, because it's time for
Speaker 1: us to take another quick break. Part of the problem
Speaker 1: here is that we're talking about a material that's still
Speaker 1: a little challenging to manufacture, especially in mass quantities. But
Speaker 1: there have been improvements in carbon nanotube manufacturing processes very recently. Yeah, actually,
Speaker 1: I'm we were, we were, and you know, we're recording
Speaker 1: this in early January, UM two thousand and thirteen. And
Speaker 1: actually just today the Internet told me that, um that
Speaker 1: Rice University has announced a macroscopic hundreds of meters long
Speaker 1: mass producible carnin carbon nanotube thread. Yeah, this is this
Speaker 1: is incredible news because again, before we were talking about
Speaker 1: nanotubes that were a millimeter long, and that was considered huge.
Speaker 1: Now we're talking hundreds of meters. That is such an
Speaker 1: enormous leap that it it boggles my mind. And it's
Speaker 1: all through this this wet method that they used to
Speaker 1: manufacture carbon nanotubes. Yeah, wet spinning method in which, um,
Speaker 1: and I'm sorry, I'm going to read this directly from
Speaker 1: my notes, which is probably a terrible thing to do,
Speaker 1: but in which clumps of nanotubes are dissolved in a
Speaker 1: bath of some acid stuff squirted through small holes to
Speaker 1: create long strands, and then the strands are wound into
Speaker 1: a big spool until they dry out. That's pretty incredible.
Speaker 1: So really, the way I understand that is that we
Speaker 1: have dissolved the carbon nanotubes until they're essentially a liquid.
Speaker 1: You put them into what is essentially a nozzle, you
Speaker 1: squirted out in what is essentially like a giant icing
Speaker 1: thing where your favorite kind of cake, and you get
Speaker 1: this long string of carbon nanotube. That's exactly the way
Speaker 1: you wanted to be until you get that, you spoil
Speaker 1: it up and there you got You got a hundreds,
Speaker 1: hundreds of meters long carbon nanotube. Yeah, it's it's the
Speaker 1: thickness of a human hair. Um uh And and not
Speaker 1: like I was saying earlier that you know, that's that's big.
Speaker 1: That's a bunch of a bunch of h space things
Speaker 1: measurements of stuff. It's much much larger than say, you know,
Speaker 1: a single carbon nanotube would normally be you know again
Speaker 1: one billionth of a of a meter in die ameter.
Speaker 1: It's larger than that. Yes, And there there's a video
Speaker 1: and on the Internet of an LED lamp being both
Speaker 1: suspended and powered by this thread, right, so so that
Speaker 1: it's this tiny like human hair with cord that's holding
Speaker 1: a lightbulb, and the light bulb is lit because power
Speaker 1: is going going through and and it's it's completely suspended
Speaker 1: that way. So you think about that and you're like,
Speaker 1: all right, so we've got this very thin, very strong
Speaker 1: stuff that can provide power across it. This could revolutionize electronics.
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely. And there's also there's also been a bunch
Speaker 1: of research into health applications for this. UM. It can
Speaker 1: be used as a delivery system for drugs and vitamins
Speaker 1: because carbon antitudes are are so bitty that they can
Speaker 1: they can really get in there, you know, they you
Speaker 1: can you can attach you can attach stuff to them
Speaker 1: and send them in through things and and be really
Speaker 1: effective as an antioxidant. UM they naturally pick up free
Speaker 1: radicals in UH in blood systems. I used to do
Speaker 1: that in college. Oh my, um you can. One of
Speaker 1: one of the really cool bits of research that I
Speaker 1: saw had people UM sticking an antibody onto the end
Speaker 1: of a nanotube UM and then letting a blood sample
Speaker 1: pass through it, and different kinds of tumor cells or
Speaker 1: viruses will get trapped by that antibody and then UM,
Speaker 1: so you can you can test for all kinds of
Speaker 1: things without having to do any expensive lab work in
Speaker 1: the field in a couple hours. Interesting. Of course, this
Speaker 1: also leads to a dark discussion in that carbon nanotubes
Speaker 1: may also be depending upon their their structure, may be
Speaker 1: extremely hazardous to our health. And uh, there are a
Speaker 1: couple of reasons for this. One is that when you're
Speaker 1: talking about things that are on the nano scale, their
Speaker 1: properties change fairly dramatically. You can have materials that act
Speaker 1: as conductors in the macro scale, but on the nano
Speaker 1: scale they might be insulators. You also may have things
Speaker 1: that on the macro scale are perfectly safe, but on
Speaker 1: the nanoscale are toxic. And one of the things that
Speaker 1: concerned people fairly early on in the research of carbon nanotubes,
Speaker 1: and has been studied extensively since then, is that carbon nanotubes,
Speaker 1: depending again on the specific structure that you've designed for them,
Speaker 1: bear a striking resemblance to this substance called asbestos. And
Speaker 1: and for for for those young uns out there, this
Speaker 1: was an asbestos is a substance that used to be
Speaker 1: used in a lot of insulation. Um. Yes, it's fire retardant.
Speaker 1: Fire retardant, which which is great. I mean that's less
Speaker 1: fire good. Yes, yes, fire fire bad. As Frankenstein's Monster
Speaker 1: taught us. However, Um, you know it was made up
Speaker 1: of these of these small, pointy particles that people would
Speaker 1: aspirate and it would get stuck in the linings of
Speaker 1: your lungs and your other internal organs and cause cause
Speaker 1: lesions and metalalithiomia. No, that was not the word mesol. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: the form of cancer that the lining around your organs,
Speaker 1: that's specifically what what we're talking about here, but but
Speaker 1: more specifically the lungs because you would breathe in these particles,
Speaker 1: and they're small enough so that they can, uh, they
Speaker 1: can infect a cell. Essentially, they can, uh, they can
Speaker 1: penetrate a cell. That's the best word for it, penetrate
Speaker 1: a cell. But they are large enough so that the
Speaker 1: body's immune system cannot easily get rid of them, which
Speaker 1: is why it becomes a very dangerous substance. And the
Speaker 1: carbonanotubes bear some physical resemblance to those needle pointing fibers. Now,
Speaker 1: according to at least some research, I was reading one
Speaker 1: report that was kind of interesting, and I cannot pretend
Speaker 1: that I follow it completely because my my medical knowledge
Speaker 1: is uh, plucky and adventury. No wait, I'm sorry, that's
Speaker 1: my military knowledge. Um by the very model of a
Speaker 1: modern tech stuff. Podcaster they it was from an online library,
Speaker 1: is actually from the Cancer and Aging Handbook. And the
Speaker 1: study suggested that carbon nanotubes could penetrate cells, but they
Speaker 1: did so in a different way than asbestos particles did,
Speaker 1: Like they both could penetrate cells, and they both could
Speaker 1: cause similar outcomes. So, in other words, there is some
Speaker 1: evidence that carbon nanotubes could in fact be carcinogenic, but
Speaker 1: they do it in a different mechanism, Like there's a
Speaker 1: different mechanism for how they are they get enveloped by
Speaker 1: other cells or by cells, I should say not other cells,
Speaker 1: but by cells. And so the research actually suggests that
Speaker 1: there might be ways of creating carbon anotubes where they
Speaker 1: do not behave in this way where they are causing cancer.
Speaker 1: They just kind of hang out, right, And that's one
Speaker 1: of the other problems about carbonano tubes is they have
Speaker 1: this bio persistence, meaning that if they are in a
Speaker 1: biological entity, they do not tend to break down right there.
Speaker 1: They're so strong and sturdy. Yeah, they don't react. They're
Speaker 1: nonreactive when it comes to that too, So you don't
Speaker 1: have it just you know, decompose into some other material
Speaker 1: or get absorbed and then you know, they're harmless, that's
Speaker 1: the problem. They don't do that. So, but there might
Speaker 1: be ways of engineering carbon nanotubes so that they are
Speaker 1: not hazardous, right. And also all research I've read has
Speaker 1: suggested that it's not that we shouldn't go into making
Speaker 1: carbon nanotubes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's most people are
Speaker 1: saying that, yes, it's a danger, but these things are
Speaker 1: so useful that we we almost can't afford to to
Speaker 1: not continue researching them. And that most most of the
Speaker 1: most of the danger comes to people who are going
Speaker 1: to be working in development development labs creating them. Um
Speaker 1: And that there are definitely lots of different air filters
Speaker 1: and other precautions that could be used to to lessen
Speaker 1: the danger to these important workers. Um And And that
Speaker 1: ultimately we may find ways of creating these as you know,
Speaker 1: so safely that it becomes a non issue. Um. Not
Speaker 1: that you know, we can ignore it. That's the important
Speaker 1: part is don't ignore the fact that there's a danger,
Speaker 1: but but understand that there may be ways of working
Speaker 1: around that so that we minimize the danger to ourselves
Speaker 1: while maximizing the benefit that these things could provide us. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's you know, one of the things
Speaker 1: that definitely we have to keep in mind about technology.
Speaker 1: I mean, just like your computer at home, assuming you
Speaker 1: have one, has some material in it that can be
Speaker 1: extremely toxic if you are if you're exposed to it directly.
Speaker 1: But computers are incredible benefit too. It's just that it's
Speaker 1: under specific circumstances that you can become very dangerous. Like
Speaker 1: let's say you catch it, it catches on fire, that
Speaker 1: kind of thing, or you're taking it apart to try
Speaker 1: and harvest the various uh metals and minerals that are
Speaker 1: inside your computer. That would be a bad thing to do.
Speaker 1: Don't do that. So yeah, I mean it's just one
Speaker 1: of those things where you've got to keep in mind
Speaker 1: the various scenarios and uh and and remember to to
Speaker 1: treat it carefully. So guys, if you're out there playing
Speaker 1: with carbonano tubes, just you know, be careful. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: what you do in your spare time. Leave it to
Speaker 1: the professionals. Probably, I think it's it's probably the important
Speaker 1: important thing there. But I find this this whole area
Speaker 1: of study very interesting. I mean, it does have the
Speaker 1: the potential to completely revolutionize everything that has to do
Speaker 1: with electronics. I mean you sit there and you think
Speaker 1: about how incredible things are right now, go and go
Speaker 1: to like see yes one year and take a look
Speaker 1: at a TV, and you see how thin they've become. Well,
Speaker 1: with this sort of technology, they could be even even,
Speaker 1: you know, so thin that when you mounted against a wall,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't be able to see the difference between the
Speaker 1: wall and the TV. I mean, that's that's how thin
Speaker 1: we're talking basically basically a sticker. Just yeah, think. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's gonna take a while before we ever get there,
Speaker 1: so we can at least get to a point where
Speaker 1: it's gonna look like a piece of paper. And that
Speaker 1: wraps up another classic episode of tech Stuff. Hope you
Speaker 1: guys enjoyed it, and I look forward to revisiting carbon nanotubes.
Speaker 1: I think it's about time I do an update on
Speaker 1: that particular topic, because I guarantee a lot has happened
Speaker 1: since two thousand. But if you guys have suggestions for
Speaker 1: future topics of tech stuff beyond carbon nanotubes, let me know.
Speaker 1: Send me an email the addresses tech stuff at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com, or drop me a line on
Speaker 1: Facebook or Twitter handle his text stuff h s W.
Speaker 1: I look forward to hearing from you, and don't forget
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Speaker 1: You'll find an archive of over every episode, all every episode,
Speaker 1: as I was just about to try and say, of
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Speaker 1: like that one, and you can search that archive, although
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