Tag Archives: The Chemica Galaxy

ASME’s introductory nanotechnology podcast doesn’t mention the word billionth

It’s a landmark moment, I have never before come across an introductory nanotechnology presentation where they make no reference to ‘billionth’ as in, nanometre means one billionth of a metre.

The American Society of Mechanical Engineers now known as ASME offers a series of podcasts about nanotechnology on its website. This page is where you can sign up to get free access. (You might want to take a look at that agreement before submitting it. More about that later.) I saw the first installation on Andrew Maynard’s 2020 Science blog here. Andrew is prominently featured in this first podcast.

I enjoyed the podcast and found this new approach to introducing nanotechnology quite intriguing and I suspect they’re going in the right direction. 1 billionth of a metre or of a second doesn’t really convey that much information for most of us. Personally, I visualize the existence of alternate realities, tiny worlds of atoms and molecules which I believe to be present but are not perceptible to me through my senses.

It’s been decades since I first saw a representation of an atom or a molecule but the resemblance to planets has often played in my imagination since. They will always be planets for me, regardless of the fact that more accurate representations exist than the ones I saw so many years ago.

I think it’s the poetic aspect of it all, as if we carry worlds within us while our own planet may be simply an atom in someone else’s universe. One of these days when I have a better handle on what I’m trying to say here,  I will write a poem about it.

Actually, I’ve been meaning to do a series of poems based on the periodic table of elements ever since I saw a revisioning of the periodic table, The Chemical Galaxy by Philip Stewart. The desire was reawakened recently on finding Sam Kean’s series Blogging the Periodic Table, for Slate Magazine. From Kean’s first entry,

I’m blogging about the periodic table this month in conjunction with my new book, The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World From the Periodic Table of the Elements. Now, I know not everyone has fond memories of the periodic table, but it got to me early—thanks to one element, mercury. I used to break those old-fashioned mercury thermometers all the time as a kid (accidentally, I swear), and I was always fascinated to see the little balls of liquid metal rolling around on the floor. My mother used to sweep them up with a toothpick, and we kept a jar with a pecan-size glob of all the mercury from all the broken thermometers on a knickknack shelf in our house.

But what really reinforced my love of mercury—and got me interested in the periodic table as a whole—was learning about all the places that mercury popped up in history. Lewis and Clark hauled 600 mercury-laced laxative tablets with them when they explored the interior of America—historians have tracked down some places where they stayed based on deposits in the soil. The so-called mad hatters (like the one in Alice in Wonderland) went crazy because of the mercury in the vats in which they cleaned fur pelts.

Mercury made me see how many different areas of life the periodic table intersects with, and I wrote The Disappearing Spoon because I realized that you can say the same about every single element on the table. There are hidden tales about familiar elements like gold, carbon, and lead and even obscure elements like tellurium and molybdenum have wonderful, often wild back stories.

There are eight more entries as of 11:25 am PST, July 15, 2010. I wish Kean good luck as he sells his book. By the way, he’ll be blogging until early August 2010.

Getting back to ASME and their nanotechnology podcasts. I haven’t signed up and am not sure I will. They are insisting on copyright in their  user agreement (link to page),

Copyrights. All rights, including copyright and database right, in this Site and its contents (including, but not limited to, all text, images, software, video clips, audio clips) (collectively, “Content”), are owned by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), or otherwise used by ASME as permitted by applicable law or agreement.

Content Displayed on the Website. User shall not remove, obscure or alter the Content. User shall not distribute, rent, lease, transfer or otherwise make the Content available to any third party, or use the Content for systematic downloading, and/or the making of print or electronic copies for transmission to non-subscribers. User may download only the video clips designated on the Website as downloadable and may not share video URLs with non-subscribers. [emphases mine]

If I read those passages correctly, I’m prevented from copying any portion of the materials from their website and reproducing them on this blog to nonsubscribers. (I trust reproducing portions of their ‘user agreement’ won’t land me into trouble.) Since I copy and excerpt with a very high rate of frequency (being careful to give attribution and links while excerpting portions only), I don’t want to be placed in the position of having to ask for permission each and every time I’d like to copy something from the ASME site.  A lot of my entries are timely so I don’t want to wait and, frankly, I don’t understand what their problems with activities such as mine might be.  I suspect that this agreement will prove overly prohibitive and I hope the ASME folks will reconsider their approach to copyright. I really would like to view a few of their podcasts.