ONE TINY TECHNOLOGY wimming was the sport to watch at the 2008 Beijing Olympics A total of 25 world records were broken The only Olympics where more swimming records were broken occurred in 1976 the year contestants could wear goggles for the first time of the records set in Beijing all but one of the swimmers wore Speedo's latest swimsuit The suit seemed to be a record generating machine winning three world records in its first week In the six months between the suit's debut and the Olympics swimmers wearing it broke a total of 48 records The LZR Racer a full body swimsuit was the culmination of three years of development that included help from NASA scientists a key ingredient in the success of the suit was its fabric which was designed to reduce drag from the water as much as possible while maximizing support of the swimmers muscles The fabric was a very high density weave Most swimmers in the 2008 Summer Olympics wore LZR Racer suits which used nanotechnology to make the suits faster which compressed the swimmers bodies to streamline
them The fabric then went through a nanotechnology treatment that changed the molecular structure of the surface of the material The process resulted in fabric that absorbed only 2 percent of its weight in water compared with the 50 percent absorbed by the previous competitive swimsuit fabric The governing board for international swimming competition Fédération Internationale de Natation FINA banned the LZR Racer and similar suits in 2010 This ban addressed accusations that competitors with expensive state of the art swimsuits had an unfair technological advantage FINA dictated that suits had to be thicker than one millimeter made of material with limited buoyancy and expose the neck shoulders and ankles of the athlete Despite FINA s modified swimsuit requirements companies still use technology to improve their products Many use nanotechnology based finishes Nano Sports that add to or modify less than 100 nanometers of the Many sports have already embraced nanotechnology Carbon nanotubes fabric s surface to repel water These finishes typically are added to bike frames tennis trap air bubbles on the surface preventing water from rackets baseball bats hockey sticks and golf clubs to strengthen them reaching the material's fibers As nanotechnology while keeping them light Tennis balls ith clay nanoparticles retain their increasingly plays a role in sports equipment the air keeping them bouncier longe debate continues as to how much technology in sports Ice skating blades stay super sharp thanks to ceramic nanoparticles is too much Nanocoatings on exercise clothin help it block the sun s ultraviolet rays stay drier and resist odors The Science of Small I Nanotechnology is a confusing discipline Is it science Is it engineering Is it natural or man made The 6
answer to all these questions is yes The National Nanotechnology Initiative describes nanotechnology as science engineering and I technology conducted at the nanoscale which is about 1 to 100 nanometers A meter is a little taller than the height of an average countertop That meter is made up of a billion nanometers As a comparison imagine Earth represents a meter A nanometer would then be the equivalent of a marble A man made transistor found in an integrated circuit inside a computer or cell phone measures less than 30 nanometers in size A virus cell varies from 60 to 200 nanometers Nanotechnology deals with transistors viruses and more It covers a broad spectrum of disciplines including chemistry biology materials science physics and engineering Dr K Eric Drexler one of the pioneers of nanotechnology once lamented I know of no other field defined by a criterion as generic as size Historical Nanoparticles Humans have been using nanoparticles in man made objects for thousands of years Long ago artisans did not realize they were working with nanotechnology their remarkable works were the result of trial and error An ancient Roman artisan created an extraordinary piece of work now known as the Lycurgus Cup The images surrounding the cup are splendid but what is really special about this cup is its color Initially the cup appears opaque green Shine a light through it however and the cup glows translucent red Scientists now know nanosized gold and silver particles suspended in the glass create this magical effect Similar techniques were used to create the rich colors for medieval stained glass
