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Justin Perdzock
3­10­14
8th writing workshop
Research paper

Nanotechnology: How far can it go and how long will it take?

Imagine being able to swallow a vial of liquid and have it cure cancer. That sounds like a pretty strong, expensive medicine, but in fact it is not a medicine at all.
They are tiny little robots that are programmed to pick unhealthy cells and destroy them but also to use the matter from the destroyed cells to create more tiny robots.
These robots, referred to as nanotechnology, could also be used for more than simply medical purposes. They could be used for military and industrial purposes as well, and none of this is science fiction but very real and could all happen inside 25 years. You may be wondering what exactly nanotechnology is and where the progress is being made. According to the dictionary it is the science of manipulating materials on an atomic or microscopic scale especially to create tiny robots. In recent years the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has condoned multiple uses of nanotechnology. These uses include studies in how to cure and prevent ailments or used in the field such as nano­formulations, enabling clinical trials for breast,

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gynecological, solid tumor, lung, mesenchymal tissue, lymphoma, central nervous system and genitourinary cancer treatments.(Where it stands now) In the military aspect there are many different applications being looked at, specifically in the area of body armour. The Ministry of Defense in the United Kingdom has released statements saying they want to do three different things which include: Si or TiO
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nanoparticles embedded in epoxy matrix, SiO nanoparticles in a liquid polymer
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which hardens on ballistic impact, and Iron nanoparticles in inert oil which hardens on stimulation with an electrical pulse. The nanotechnology in military is not limited to defense but also to communications and weapons.(Soutter) The history of nanotechnology is not new as according to the definition can go all the way back to the colorful windows of cathedrals of from the 1500s because of the manipulating of the atoms as individual units. The idea of creating robots on a nanoscale gained its first notoriety on a serious level in 1959 Richard Feynman of the California Institute of Technology gave what is considered to be the first lecture on technology and engineering at the atomic scale, "There's Plenty of Room at the
Bottom" at an American Physical Society meeting at Caltech. The science of creating microscopic robots though is fairly new, coming to public view around the late 1990s. In 2000 nanotechnology received its first major western hemisphere accomplishment when President Bill Clinton signed off on funding for the National
Nanotechnology Initiative. In 2003 the first physical milestone was achieved, two
Rice students designed and built a microscopic robot that destroyed cancer cells but

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didn't harm healthy cells. In 2005, 2 students from the California Institute of
Technology developed a dna­based computation theory that predicted nanocrystal growth. In 2006, Rice students developed a nano­car with the ability to be controlled and roll around, making it the first remote control machine on a molecular scale, unfortunately it was lost when the temperatures rose to high. In 2010 New