My New Favorite Web Site

Recently, I came across the Web site for the Materials Research Society and I have to say: WOW. Never has nanotechnology looked so amazing.

Okay, I know what you're thinking. The words "materials research" don't exactly call to mind incredible imagery or astounding panoramic vistas. But that's what's so cool about it. The unexpected. About every six months or so, the society holds an image competition whereby researchers can submit imagery related to their field of study. These are folks studying a host of molecule-sized things, including nanowires, self-assembling particles, magnetic shape-memory composites, organic thin-film transistors, nano-structured gold and well, hundreds of items you've probably NEVER heard of, but that are all important for advancing the science of medicine and energy technologies, among others.

If you were one of these researchers and you wanted to get across the importance of your work, you could try to explain it using a slide-show presentation or an academic paper. And in fact, they all probably do that. But another way to get across what you're doing is give someone an image from the tiny world in which you work. It's a world few people know about, even other scientists. And once they see the image, curiosity follows, as do explanations about why this microscope world is so important.

That's why I like this site and why I'll be working with the folks at MRS as well as the researchers who create these images to bring these amazing graphics to the Discovery Tech site.

In the meantime, you can see competition winners here as well as other cool images here. Enjoy!

Photo: This picture presents a collage of scanning electron microscopy images nanowires and flower-like arrangements of SnO₂ platelets.
Credit: S. Barth, J. Altmayer and S. Mathur, Leibniz-Institute of New Materials, Saarbruecken, Germany