Language of Science Lags Behind Nanotech

By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 17, 2004; Page A07

When Paul Alivisatos and his fellow scientists at the University of California at Berkeley succeeded in making invisibly small, atomic-scale cages -- each one a hollow sphere of interlinked cobalt and oxygen atoms with a perfect crystal of platinum rattling around inside -- they basked in the pleasure of knowing they had created an entirely new chemical substance.

The cages -- so small that tens of thousands of them would barely span the diameter of a human hair -- can spur chemical reactions that would not otherwise occur and are the latest in a string of new substances to come out of the hot new field of nanotechnology, which deals with molecules just billionths of a meter in size.

But with their work completed, they faced one more difficult task: what to call their creation.

A team member from China suggested "yolk-shells" because the jiggling platinum crystals resemble wobbly yolks inside eggs. And so it was that the vaguely breakfasty term made it into their scientific report, published in the journal Science last month.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31579-2004May16.html

I thought that's what the name already was.

--bkl

with low molecular weight molecules in gas state inside. these that they're talking about sound like they are are covalently bonded, instead of hydrogen bonded (and aren't made out of water,) and they have a loose crystal rattling around inside. it doesn't seem as though the two really have much in common except for the "cage" analogy.