Adventures of Nanodog, Snazzy Goggles, Find It on Ebay

Adventures of Nanodog

Actually a piece of dust on a silicon wafer, "Nanodog" was an accidental creation. Shufeng Bai, a postdoc in Stephen Y. Chou's group at Princeton University, noticed the unusual speck of dust during one of his experiments at the Nanostructures Laboratory. "From time to time, we can produce interesting stuff," he tells Lovy. "We also got NanoMickey once."

Bai submitted the snapshot to Princeton's 1st Annual Art of Science Competition held this past spring. The competition highlighted works of art "produced during the course of research or incorporating tools and concepts from science." Of the more than 200 entries submitted, 55 are on display in an online gallery at www.princeton.edu/artofscience.

Winners were selected on May 3. First place, "Plasma Table," received $250; second place, awarded to "Driven," received $154.50; and "Individually Marked Ants" came in third, receiving $95.50. Prize amounts were set up in proportion to the "Golden Ratio," a mathematical constant deemed aesthetically pleasing when applied to shapes.

Alas, "Nanodog" did not place in the competition but was selected to appear in the online gallery. The judges must have been nanocat people.

Snazzy goggles

Last month, BBC News and CNN reported a breaking development in goggles. Never again will swimmers have to suffer a less-than-perfect stroke or lose precious seconds just to keep track of how many laps they've swum or how much time a lap has taken.

Instead of looking at their wrists or up at a wall, swimmers may be able to just look at their goggle lenses.

Katie Williams, a design student at Brunel University in West London, created a prototype of the new goggles, called Inview, as part of an industrial design course. Williams drew on her prior experiences as a lifeguard to develop the new technology. "If they have a watch on, a lot of swimmers will move their left arm differently, just to see how fast they are going," she told BBC News. "It's wasting energy for them, really." She also noted that swimmers easily lose track of the number of laps they've completed.

Inview goggles rely on a built-in compass located at the back of the head strap to keep track of time and lap information. Swimmers push a small button on the side of the goggles when they enter the water to register in which direction they'll be swimming. Once a swimmer reaches the end of the lap and turns, the compass registers a change in coordinates and records the time. Tiny mirrors reflect data, such as time, speed, and laps completed, onto the goggle lenses.

Find it on eBay

Reader Joanne Cox, a chemistry instructor at Cleveland Community College, noticed something unusual during a recent search on Google. She was looking up information on the experimental fusion reactor that will be built in France. "I was amused at the 'Sponsored Links' that appeared," she says.

Sure enough, a search for "fusion reactor" on Google returns a page with lots of relevant results. Under the Sponsored Links, however, lies an ad for a "Fusion Reactor" with a link to eBay, the online auction site. The link leads to a search results page on eBay for "fusion power," which at press time included such items as fishing line, golf clubs, speakers, and yoga tapes, but no actual fusion reactors.

Cox also noted that one of her students, while doing a Google search for a project, came upon a similar sponsored link ad for cesium. Unlike the "fusion reactor" search, a search on eBay for "cesium" actually did return some relevant items for auction. At press time, a bidding war had developed for 150 mg of "99.95% pure" cesium. With one day and 15 hours left in the auction, the going price was $28.

Newscripts invites readers to submit either wacky ads from Google searches or chemical finds on eBay to newscripts@acs.org.

This week's column was written by Rachel Pepling . Please send comments and suggestions to newscripts@acs.org.