Nanorobots and You

There is a fascinating story in this week's Science News for Kids. Researchers at a number of universities are building nanorobots which they hope eventually will be able to fight disease right inside the human body! The prefix "nano" comes from bothfrom Latin[nānus]and from Greek[nanos], meaning a dwarf, or a little old man. In science, we use nano- to mean something very small; it can also precisely mean one-billionth (a "nanosecond" is one-billionth of a second). Sonow you know why Apple named their smallest iPod the Nano!At any rate, these nanorobots are built from DNA, which of course is the building block of human life, and they travel through the body by hooking onto other DNA 'ladders'. At some point in the future scientists could, for example, program one of these nanorobots to attack a specific cancer cell, but leave all the healthy cells around it alone. Click here to read this very interesting story about nanorobots. Illustration shows a nanorobot crawling along a DNA track. Credit: Nicolle Rager Fuller
1 like ·   •  1 comment  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on October 12, 2010 14:22
Comments Showing 1-1 of 1 (1 new)    post a comment »
dateUp arrow    newest »

message 1: by Marsha (new)

Marsha A few years ago the Lego FIRST competition was about nanoscience. My students thought it was a fantastic topic and they had a wonderful time exploring topics within the science.

It is definitely something that I think will be forefront in the lives of the kids that I teach everyday. I do think, though, the whole idea of something this small is very difficult to visualize for them. It wasn't until we tried to "build" a model for how nanotechnology might replace a bandaid by actually rebuilding cells and a protective covering that they began to grasp it.


back to top