Centaur

wildcat2030:

Carbon nanotubes, which are 100 times stronger than steel, can be snapped like a twig by tiny air bubbles, new research shows.

Carbon nanotubes—hollow tubes of pure carbon about as wide as a strand of DNA—are one of the most-studied materials in nanotechnology. For well over a decade, scientists have used ultrasonic vibrations to separate and prepare nanotubes in the lab.

We find that the old saying ‘I will break but not bend’ does not hold at the micro- and nanoscale,” says Rice University engineering researcher Matteo Pasquali, the lead scientist on the study, which appears this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

(via Futurity.org – Bubbles snap nanotubes like twigs)