Molecular Rotor in Motion Friday, Nov 20 2009
nanotechnology and videos 10:12 pm
This is an animation of a rotor from Drexler and Merkle’s neon pump, animated using Blender. From Machine Phase, a molecular modeling blog.
As Vladimir Nesov points out in the comments, all videos like this should be taken with a grain of salt — they’re sped up to many times what the actual speed would be. This rotor, if it were really moving at that speed, would overheat due to friction in a fraction of a second. This video doesn’t even try to show thermal vibration, but if it did, the vibrations would be much faster than could be portrayed with the frame rate.
November 21st, 2009 at 12:26 am
Not sure what I should do with the classic argument fot ID, never seems to last.
November 21st, 2009 at 4:40 am
When watching nanotech animations like this, beware of How the Videos Lie to Scientists (Eric Drexler’s note). Or just watch this video to get an idea of what most animations gloss over.
November 21st, 2009 at 1:59 pm
If the bearing surface moves at 1 cm/s, the rotor turns at about (0.01 m/s) / (10 nm) = 1 MHz.