The "Researching Nanotechnology" web site is devoted to teaching both young and old the importance of nanotechnology in our society as well as giving people the chance to read and see what nanotechnology is all about.

     Nanotechnology is the manipulation and control of matter at the nanoscale, which is 1/50,000 the diameter of a human hair. In addition to controlling matter scientists have the ability to miniaturize different types of applications to the nanoscale using a technique called top-down nanofabrication. Top-down nanofabrication is a technique where you start off, say for example, with a gold bar, which is a meter in length. First you cut the gold bar into millimeter sized pieces, than you cut those pieces into micrometers (a thousand times smaller than a millimeter). Finally you cut those pieces into nanometers, now you have reached the nanoscale and what is fascinating about the nanoscale is that the physical and chemical properties for gold have changed (a technical term used to describe an application at the nanoscale is, "nanostructure"). After shrinking an application down to the nanoscale scientists use a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) to precisely rearrange atoms one at a time. By rearranging atoms scientists are making new applications that have sophisticated functions (e.g. DNA) and that don't exist today by another technique called bottom-up nanofabrication, which is the opposite of top-down nanofabrication.

     The earliest pioneer of nanotechnology was Richard P. Feynman (top right hand side of the screen) who had a vision, that, by the year 2000 scientists would be looking at applications from a very small scale. The foundation speech below was given by Richard P. Feynman at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society - December 29, 1959.

     "As soon as I mention this, people tell me about miniaturization, and how far it has progressed today. They tell me about electric motors that are the size of the nail on your small finger. And there is a device on the market they tell me, by which you can write the Lord's Prayer on the head of a pin. But that's nothing, that's the most primitive, halting step in the direction I intend to discuss. It is a staggeringly small world that is below. In the year 2000, when they look back at this age, they will wonder why it was not until the year 1960 that anybody began seriously to move in this direction." (Click here to read the entire speech.)