8 - Kuwait Oil Company

Hi-TechFirst-Ever Images of Atoms Moving Inside aMolecule CapturedOhio State University researchers have captured thefirst-ever images of atoms moving within a moleculeby using a technique that turns one of the molecule’sown electrons into a kind of flash bulb. The imageswere snapped using an ultrafast laser, which fired 50femtosecond (a femtosecond is a quadrillionth of asecond) pulses at the molecule to knock a single electron outside of the molecules outer shell. This electron,having been knocked out of its proper place, comes crashing back into the molecule, and in doing so itprovides the kind of illumination the researchers need to image the molecule itself. By measuring the scatteredsignal of the electron as it collides with the molecule, they were able to reconstruct the inner workings of themolecule, including things like the positions of the atoms nuclei. For their experiments the researchers usedoxygen (O2) and nitrogen (N2) molecules because their molecular structures are well understood. The nextsteps will involve imaging more complex molecules and, eventually, figuring out the potential for preciselycontrolling chemical reactions right down to the atomic level.Spider Silk Conducts Heat Better Than CopperIn addition to being extremely strong and stretchy,spider silk conducts heat better than most materials,including silicon, aluminum and pure iron, mechanicalengineers at Iowa State University have discovered.Xinwei Wang, lead researcher on the study, found thatspider silk conducts heat 1,000 times better than wovensilkworm silk and 800 times better than other organictissues, which is surprising because most materialsfrom living things are very poor conductors of heat.Spider silk conducts heat at a rate of 416 watts permeter Kelvin, compared with copper at 401 and skinat 0.6 watts per meter Kelvin. Wang said: "This is verysurprising because spider silk is organic material. For organic material, this is the highest ever. There are onlya few materials higher - silver and diamond." This discovery could open a door to using spider silk to createflexible, heat-dissipating parts for electronics, better clothes for hot weather and bandages that don't trap heat.42 April-June 2012