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Science Forum Index » Nanotechnology Forum » wall of nanotube
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| Paul |
 Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2003 9:08 pm |
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I am wondering if the wall of carbon nanotube is like net - i.e. among the
sparsely meshed atom are the holes through the wall. Almost all the pictures
of the nanotube show such a structure. |
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| Chris Phoenix |
| Posted: Sun Oct 05, 2003 10:40 am |
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The boundary of an atom is hard to define precisely, because the
electrons cause all sorts of weird forces that have fuzzy boundaries.
But you should think of the pictures you've seen as schematics or
blueprints, not actual representations of the physics.
You can think of an atom kind of like a koosh ball, and a covalent bond
as tying together lots of strands between two koosh balls. The
atoms--more precisely, their electrons--overlap quite a bit. That's
what makes the bond: the electrons are shared between the atoms. It's
not like pushing billiard balls together, where there are big spaces
between. It's more like cotton balls or koosh balls.
Put a bunch of koosh balls on a table in a hexagonal pattern. Squeeze
them together pretty hard, so they make a somewhat lumpy continuous
surface. That's kind of like graphite; roll it up to get buckytubes.
Now try to throw another koosh ball through them. If you don't throw it
pretty hard, it'll just bounce off. As you throw it harder, it might
break something, or stick, before it got through to the other side.
This is a pretty sloppy analogy, but it's better than thinking of small
dots with thin bars between them, the way the pictures show.
Chris
Paul wrote:
Quote:
I am wondering if the wall of carbon nanotube is like net - i.e. among the
sparsely meshed atom are the holes through the wall. Almost all the pictures
of the nanotube show such a structure.
--
Chris Phoenix cphoenix@best.com http://xenophilia.org
Center for Responsible Nanotechnology (co-founder) http://CRNano.org |
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