Tag Archives: Yasuhisa Hotta

Using music to align your nanofibers

It’s always nice to feature a ‘nano and music’ research story, my Nov. 6, 2013 posting being, until now, the most recent. A Jan. 8, 2014 news item on Nanowerk describes Japanese researchers’ efforts with nanofibers (Note: A link has been removed),

Humans create and perform music for a variety of purposes, such as aesthetic pleasure, healing, religion, and ceremony. Accordingly, a scientific question arises: Can molecules or molecular assemblies interact physically with the sound vibrations of music? In the journal ChemPlusChem (“Acoustic Alignment of a Supramolecular Nanofiber in Harmony with the Sound of Music”), Japanese researchers have now revealed their physical interaction. When classical music was playing, a designed supramolecular nanofiber in a solution dynamically aligned in harmony with the sound of music.

Sound is vibration of matter, having a frequency, in which certain physical interactions occur between the acoustically vibrating media and solute molecules or molecular assemblies. Music is an art form consisting of the sound and silence expressed through time, and characterized by rhythm, harmony, and melody. The question of whether music can cause any kind of molecular or macromolecular event is controversial, and the physical interaction between the molecules and the sound of music has never been reported.

The Jan. 8, 2014 Chemistry Views article, which originated the news item, provides more detail,

Scientists working at Kobe University and Kobe City College of Technology, Japan, have now developed a supramolecular nanofiber, composed of an anthracene derivative, which can dynamically align by sensing acoustic streaming flows generated by the sound of music. Time course linear dichroism (LD) spectroscopy could visualize spectroscopically the dynamic acoustic alignments of the nanofiber in the solution. The nanofiber aligns upon exposure to the audible sound wave, with frequencies up to 1000 Hz, with quick responses to the sound and silence, and amplitude and frequency changes of the sound wave. The sheared flows generated around glass-surface boundary layer and the crossing area of the downward and upward flows allow shear-induced alignments of the nanofiber.
Music is composed of the multi complex sounds and silence, which characteristically change in the course of its playtime. The team, led by A. Tsuda, uses “Symphony No. 5 in C minor, First movement: Allegro con brio” written by Beethoven, and “Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K. 550, First movement”, written by Mozart in the experiments. When the classical music was playing, the sample solution gave the characteristic LD profile of the music, where the nanofiber dynamically aligned in harmony with the sound of music.

Here’s an imagie illustrating the scientists’ work with music,

[downloaded from http://www.chemistryviews.org/details/ezine/5712621/Musical_Molecules.html]

[downloaded from http://www.chemistryviews.org/details/ezine/5712621/Musical_Molecules.html]

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Acoustic Alignment of a Supramolecular Nanofiber in Harmony with the Sound of Music by Ryosuke Miura, Yasunari Ando, Yasuhisa Hotta, Yoshiki Nagatani, Akihiko Tsuda, ChemPlusChem 2014.  DOI: 10.1002/cplu.201300400

This is an open access paper as of Jan. 8, 2014. If the above link does not work, try this .