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Nano glossary

Nanoparticles – are a single unit of material that is on a scale below 100 nanometers. Nanoparticles occur naturally, for example, carbon black is a nanoparticle, which is essentially the soot that we get from a fire in the fireplace.

The distinction to understand is that there are engineered nanoparticles and natural nanoparticles. The engineered ones are ones that we designed and made to accomplish a particular purpose. Natural nanoparticles nature makes, like the particles of volcanoes which make the sunset red.

Nanomaterials – are any materials in which at least one of its dimensions is on the nanoscale. These can be anything - gold, carbon, silver, titanium dioxide, silica - many materials are used at their nano scale because of the new properties they display or the ways that their small size allows them to be used.

Nanoscale – the world when you look at it on the level of atoms and molecules. Usually described as being between 1 and 100 nanometers.

The Nanobama

Here is the icon image of Barak Obama
made from carbon nanotubes. Each face is made of about 150 million nanotubes, that’s about as many people as voted in the 2008 presidential election. To see more about how it was
done, visit:
www.nanobama.com

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