InDigest
By: Chris Thompson
During a delicate snowfall, in the tranquil winter garden fight scene of Kill Bill, O-Ren battles the Bride. O-Ren is skeptical of the Bride’s sword: is it really a Hatori Hanzo? With a supreme sense of finality, it is decided that indeed it is a Hanzo blade. Only a metal with embedded geometrically superior nano-structures created by a master with time-tested craft could be sharp enough to scalp a human head as if it were cutting through butter.
Tarantino has a flare for creating worlds that are far removed from scientific reality. So is it possible that the master craftsmen can actually create a sword of this calibur? The magic of superior swords from Japan and Damascus has been intensely studied by German scientists with really, really small microscopes. What they have found is that the secret is only incidentally in the recipe and the technique. The swordsmiths of 900 BCE were making what scientists today are struggling to control — carbon nanotubes. The cousin of the diamond, these structures have the potential to make the strongest materials on earth. A diamond is made of carbon crystals. Besides impurities, which add color, a carbon crystal is made exclusively of carbon atoms. The atoms have left their homes (other molecules) and have grouped together. This happens over a long period of time, under an intensely hot, highly pressurized atmosphere, deep below the earth’s crust.
A carbon atom typically has four limbs to bond to other atoms; for example, in ch4 (methane) the one carbon atom has one hydrogen atom for each carbon limb, or in c2h6 (ethane) each of the two carbon atoms are bonded to three hydrogen and one carbon (the other carbon). And in c3h8 (propane) three carbons are holding hands in a line with the middle carbon having two hydrogen friends and the end carbons having three, so that each carbon is happily bonded four times. Do you remember Goro from Mortal Kombat? It’s kind of like he is holding hands with four friends.
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Methane Ethane Propane
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Goro
Carbon and hydrogen bond frequently, like siblings—or maybe more like coworkers—but once in a while a big bully (a big atom like iron) comes along and wants to bond twice with carbon, so even though carbon has four potential bonds, it will only be bonded to three atoms. Under great temperatures carbon atoms are able to do amazing things, and with this sense of freedom they can bond to one another in ways impossible before. Just as with a bully atom (iron), carbon can bond with carbon twice in a double bond. Now, as these carbon atoms are coalescing and forming double bonds, they configure themselves into a beauteous mutation of a geometrically sturdy nature. That’s not all— double bonds can move around freely, unhindered. What was once between two atoms can now be shared with the whole neighborhood as all the local carbon atoms gather together to form a network of hexagons. One carbon atom will be bonded to three others, but with four bonds as is necessary—without four bonds carbon wouldn’t be carbon—in this case, carbon is bonded limb to limb with three friends and one of those friends at any one moment has two of carbon’s four limbs. As there is a network of carbon and no carbon is unlike any other carbon, they are actually doing an amazing dance so that the double-limbed bonds are being passed around the hexagons and throughout the network. Double-bonded carbons with one hydrogen each. As this flat, one atom thick network is wrapped onto itself to form a tube it culminates into a reverberating masterpiece where all atoms are connected and feeling the vibrations from all the other atoms as electrons are allowed to flow freely throughout the network.
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Double bonded carbons with hydrogen each
The swordsmiths were not able to come up with such heat as needed to make diamonds, but with repeated heating and cooling, the carbon can leave their homes and come together to create something nearly as good: a species of molecule uniquely able to handle the stresses of battle and adept at many more applications, As scientists learn how to control carbon nanotubes, they will be used in solar energy capture, super strong materials, extremely sensitive sensors, and a whole new breed of nano scale computers. They will be playing a large roll in sculpting the human experience of the future.
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