A weird title, I know. What I’m wondering is what happened to the promise of nanotech showing up in everyday products like we’ve been promised for years now? Where are these fabulous products? This week, we did feature one such product: the “NanoNuno: Always Dry Nanostructure Umbrella.” Ok, so that’s one, but what about clothing, household products, sporting goods and more?
It turns out that nanotech isn’t being small; it is just being quiet. A good old Google search quickly turned up an NSF-sponsored scientific partnership called the National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network (NNIN) that among more important things, tracks some of the products that do integrate nanotechnology. There are pants, tennis and golf balls, bandages, pharmaceuticals, and all sorts of electronic devices including cell phones, flash drives, and LCD screens. Just a read through of NNIN’s overview page shows that there is a lot more research being put into nanotech than I even imagined.
Sweet. It’s great when science moves along quietly as that usually means that the government, politics and other people who should not be involved aren’t.
And now without segue, here are some of our favorite Gizmos from the past 2 weeks: the Lightmare LED Watch, the Celestron Sky Scout: Personal Planetarium, Planon System Solutions DocuPen RC800 Portable Scanner, and of course, anything Star Wars: the Star Wars R2-D2 Trashcan.