The nano guitar is a microscopically small carved guitar. It was developed by Dustin W. Carr in 1997, under the direction of Professor Harold G. Craighead, in the Cornell Nanofabrication Facility. The idea came about as a fun way to illustrate nanotechnology, and captured popular attention.[Payne J, Phillips M, The World’s Best Book. Running Press, 2009. , p. 109] It is disputed as to whether the nano guitar should be classified as a guitar, but it is the common opinion that it is in fact a guitar.[Schummer J, Baird D. Nanotechnology Challenges: implications for philosophy, ethics and society. World Scientific, 2006. , pp. 50–51; Nordmann A. Noumenal Technology: Reflections on the incredible tininess of nano. Techne: Research in Philosophy and Technology 8(3), 2005 read online, accessed August 15, 2010 ]
Explanation
Nanotechnology miniaturizes normal objects, in this case, a guitar. It can be used to create tiny
,
Weighing scale, and covert listening devices. An example of this is
smartdust, which can be either a camera or a listening device smaller than a grain of sand.
[Piddock, Charles. Future Tech. Creative Media Applications, Inc. 2009.
, pp. 35–39] A
nanometer is one-billionth of a meter. For comparison, a
human hair is about 200,000 nanometers thick. The nano guitar is about as long as one-twentieth of the diameter of a human hair, 10
micrometers or 10,000 nanometers long. Each of the six 'strings' is 50 nanometers wide. The entire guitar is the size of an average red blood cell. The guitar is carved from a grain of crystalline silicon by scanning a
laser over a film called a '
resist'. This technique is known as electron-beam lithography.
The guitar strings can be made to vibrate by tiny lasers using an atomic force microscope, in the same way, a guitar player might use a plectrum. The strings vibrate at around 40 000 000 Hertz, roughly 15 higher than a normal guitar, which can typically reach up to 1318.510 Hz. Even if its sound were amplified, it could not be detected by the human ear.[Physics News Update 659(3), October 28, 2003, The High and Low Notes of the Universe read online (accessed 15 August 2010)]
Implications
The nano guitar illustrates inaudible technology that is not meant for musical entertainment. The application of
frequencies generated by
nano-objects is called
sonification. Such objects can represent
numerical data and provide support for information processing activities of many different kinds that produce synthetic non-verbal sounds.
[Barrass S, Kramer G. Using sonification. Multimedia Systems 7:23–31, 1999.] Since the
manufacture of the nano-guitar,
researchers in the lab headed by Dr. Craighead have built even tinier devices. One thought is that they may be useful as tiny scales to measure tinier particles, such as
bacteria, which may aid in
diagnosis.
[“Nano becomes ‘atto’ and will soon be ‘zepto’ for Cornell.” Azonanotechnology, April 2004. read online, accessed 15 August 2010]
See also
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