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Abstract
Nanoscience is about the phenomena that occur in systems with nanometer dimensions. Some of the unique aspects of nanosystems arise solely from the tiny size of the systems. Nano is about as small as it gets in the world of regular chemistry, materials science, and biology. The diameter of a hydrogen atom is about one-tenth of a nanometer, so the nanometer scale is the very smallest scale on which we might consider building machines on the basis of the principles we learn from everyday mechanics, using the 1000 or so hydrogen atoms we could pack into a cube of size 1 nm 1 nm 1 nm. If this is all that there was to nanoscience, it would still be remarkable because of the incredible difference in scale between the nano world and the regular macroscopic world around us. In 1959, Richard Feynman gave a talk to the American Physical Society in which he laid out some of the consequences of measuring and manipulating materials at the nanoscale. This talk, “There is plenty of room at the bottom,” is reproduced in its entirety in Appendix B. It does a far better job than ever I could of laying out the consequences of a technology that allows us to carry out routine manipulations of materials at the nanoscale and if you have not already read it, you should interrupt this introduction to read it now.
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