studying nanotechnology (was Re: [Sci.nanotech] plz help..)
- From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 07 Nov 2006 00:32:45 -0000
"Ankit" <ankit.devilmaster@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
hi guys...i am a new member to this group and looking at the archives i
think you people are highly proficient in this field...i am currently
doing engineering in electronics..i want take course in nanotechnology
for my mtech....can you plz take little pains to guide me where to
start and which are gud to start from as i am complete novice as far as
this field is concerned...
Depending on how you define it, it is either pretty easy to find a
classes in nanotechnology, moderately difficult to find a classes in
nanotechnology, or downright impossible to find a class in
nanotechnology. I'll explain what I mean, but it is going to take
quite a bit of space. You've been warned in advance.
First, a long word on the field itself:
1) The Field, as it exists today:
Lets start by bearing in mind that there basically isn't much out
there right now in the real world that you could honestly call
"nanotechnology" -- at least not outside of what the genetic
engineering/synthetic biology folks do. (I count their work because
they're hijacking natural molecular machines for human purposes.)
Many people are under the impression that nanotechnology is something
you can go out right now and "do", but it isn't. It is a research
field, many years from fruition for the most part.
It doesn't matter if you've read that "Pants With Nanotechnology!(TM)
To Repel Stains!" are on the market -- that's just a case of people
renaming their work "Nanotechnology" to hop on a hype bandwagon. It
is kind of neat that people have come up with cool new synthetic
chemicals that repel stains, and such people deserve to make plenty of
money, but using the name "Nanotechnology" for such things is pure
marketing.
Most of what you'll find out there that calls itself "nanotechnology"
calls itself that for marketing reasons. Molecules are very small, but
that doesn't make synthetic organic chemistry "nanotechnology", at
least not if the term is going to mean very much. I think synthetic
organic chemistry is a really fascinating field, but it has been
around for quite some time and does not involve the creation of
atomically precise machines that weigh hundreds of thousands or
millions of daltons. Similarly, materials science is a crucial area of
study that has provided vast amounts of benefit for mankind, but I
think calling it "nanotechnology" is a distortion of what the word was
intended to mean.
In a free society, people get to call things by any name they like,
and when you can get a lot of money applying a term incorrectly to
your research and products, a term very rapidly loses its meaning. The
word "nanotechnology" is mostly used for hype value these days, and
should be treated very skeptically, especially when it is used by
academics who are seeking funding from things like the National
Nanotechnology Initiative. Nothing can make a person change the name
of their research to "Nanotechnology" as fast as the prospect of
funding in exchange for an alteration in terminology.
What is actually possible right now in the real world? Well, as I
said, we can do some fun things hijacking natural nanotechnology, aka
living organisms. We also have a lot of ideas out there, and people
are working hard on exploring them. However, excepting some
biologists, no one at the moment is working with complicated molecular
systems that can achieve atomic level control and positioning.
We know how we could build more nanomachines if we had nanomachines
already, but we don't have them, so we can't make them.
At most good universities these days you'll find plenty of talks with
blurbs claiming "molecularly precise control!" and other such
buzzwords, but mostly they aren't what you would expect. There might
be a "nanotechnology research center" near you, but inside most of
what you'll find are people doing things like spin-casting the
products of synthetic organic chemistry onto silicon wafers, and you
aren't going to find anyone building actual atomically precise
circuits and machinery, at least not beyond very very simple proofs of
concept. I want to make it clear that I have nothing against spin
casting machines or the people who use them -- it just isn't what I
think of when I use the word "nanotechnology".
2) No one is going to make your life easy:
So, as I've just explained, the urge to study "nanotechnology" is an
urge to learn about a field that is currently in its gestational phase
-- it is not even in its infancy. You can't go off, take a few classes
in "nanotechnology" or major in "nanotechnology" and then go off and
work for an established company that builds true molecular machines --
indeed, no one can yet build them.
So, what can you, the interested student, do?
Say you've read a paper or two by Eric Drexler or Robert Freitas, or
even "Engines of Creation" (now quite old) or you've picked up
"Nanosystems" and you're fascinated -- you want to learn more.
If you want to become, say, a physicist or a computer scientist, there
is a department at your university that says you can take a prescribed
set of classes in a reasonable order, and at the end, you will be
qualified for graduate studies. Surely, you think, there must be
some enlightened places where you could do the same for
nanotechnology. However, there aren't.
If you imagine that somewhere out there you can find a university
course catalog with a list of courses and a department where you go
through a the initial preparatory work (say math, physics, chemistry,
engineering of various sorts, etc.) and eventually hit the class where
"Nanosystems" or the equivalent is used as the basis for the classwork
and at the end you feel "Yes! I really understand nanotechnology
now!", well, your imagination is wrong. You can't find such a
thing. It does not exist. There are programs named "nanotechnology"
but they don't fit this description.
In fact, you're going to be hard pressed to even find a place where
Eric Drexler's name is mentioned openly. If you want to be able to
pick up "Nanosystems" and absorb the contents, you're going to have to
select your own courses and, when you're ready, you're going to have
to work through the book purely on your own.
There are two reasons for this. I'll discuss the more unpleasant part.
A number of people in academia, through very loud and persistent
efforts, managed to make Eric Drexler's work and most related study
non-mainstream at best. The people involved in doing this, like
Richard Smalley, succeeded beyond their wildest dreams and have pretty
much destroyed the academic respectability of building the sorts of
things Drexler wrote about. It doesn't matter that their arguments
were/are ridiculous, that if their arguments were correct living
organisms couldn't exist, that much of what they say amounts to
innuendo and not actual argumentation, etc. -- they've still
temporarily sullied the whole idea. There are academics out there that
think Drexler's stuff is good, but they keep their mouths shut unless
they're tenured and their funding is beyond touch.
(As an aside, this is possibly one of the greatest tragedies in science
and engineering in decades. I had a conversation a while ago with a
very smart, otherwise well informed professor of chemistry who
thought, based purely on heresay, that Drexler's work had to be
garbage because so many people had told him it was garbage. Another
academic I spoke with some time ago was rather shocked to hear that
Drexler had been the early popularizer of the term "Nanotechnology" --
he insisted that it could not possibly have been the case, since he
hadn't heard of Drexler and he did "Nanotechnology" work.)
(Every once in a while, I've managed to get through such resistance
and have gotten someone to read a copy of "Nanosystems". One of my
"victims" came back to me a week later and said "The man is amazing!
Why isn't everyone reading him?" -- to which I had to coldly reply
"because people can't be bothered to read him since they've been told
repeatedly he isn't worth reading, and because very few people will
believe someone like me.")
Second, there is a less unpleasant but none the less substantial
reason why you can't go out and study "real nano". Universities are
geared towards teaching existing fields. You would not have been able
to study computer science very easily in 1955, and you certainly
wouldn't have been able to in 1935. We're kind of in "1935" right now
in nanotechnology.
So, getting back to the core of this, if you're going to get the
sort of education you want, no one is going to make it easy for
you. No one is going to hand you a road map, no one is going to give
you advice, no one is going to cast flowers in your path. You're going
to have to be very stubborn and make your own way.
3) Lets say you are stubborn enough anyway:
Lets say that, instead of turning away in horror and studying hotel
management, you've decided you're committed -- you're willing to forge
your own course through the academic world, full speed ahead, damn the
torpedoes. Here is what I would suggest.
Although nanotechnology qua nanotechnology itself isn't really
available as a conventional university track, all the basic things
you'll need to learn are indeed out there. You can study math,
physics, chemistry (including organic chemistry), etc. without much
difficulty. Courses in everything from computer science to mechanical
engineering are out there waiting to be taken.
To do good nanotechnology work, you're going to have to learn the
whole of the mainstream physics curriculum through quantum
mechanics. You can't skip QM, because QM effects are the heart of how
things like chemical bonding happen. You're going to need to learn
most of what a chemistry major learns, including organic chemistry,
because even if you dream of a world where no one will ever reflux a
flask of chemicals for six days again, you're going to need to
understand what the chemists understand. (There is also nothing quite
like working in an organic synthesis lab to teach you how complicated
the real world can be compared to theory.) Basic computer science will
be helpful, not only because nanomachines will need computer control
systems but because designing nanomachines will require complicated
software, much of which does not yet exist. Some basic electrical
engineering, mechanical engineering, etc., will also be of use to
you. You will also need all the math you require to make sense of
those classes -- and that is a lot of math.
You might well ask "which specific classes should I take?" and I wish
I could help you there -- the best suggestion I can give you is "if
there is some section of 'Nanosystems' that you can't understand, keep
taking classes that seem to be relevant until you can understand the
whole thing."
Oh, and as for "Nanosystems" itself: you're going to have to study it
on your own, possibly with no one to ask questions of or to turn to
for help.
Indeed, you're going to have to follow this whole course of study on
your own, with little in the way of a peer group and few people with
whom you can confess that what you dream of is building artificial
molecular machines, because I assure you that a considerable fraction
of the people you explain that to in detail are going to think you're
nuts.
4) Lets say you stubborn your way through:
So lets say that you stubborn your way through an undergraduate
education with all the things you feel like you're going to need for
your future career in nanotechnology. Are there going to be places you
can go to in order to do the sort of research you're interested in?
Can you make a living doing that research?
It is going to be a bit of a challenge.
Lets say you decide to go and get a PhD. There are fairly few academic
departments that are doing serious research on real molecular
machines. (There are lots of people who *say* that is what they're
doing, but it all becomes far more sketchy when you read their papers
-- and never, ever agree to be someone's academic slave for four or
six years if you don't know what their papers look like before you
show up.)
Lets say you decide you're going to work outside of academia -- in
general, venture financed companies have about five years to start
making real money or else, so there aren't a lot of places (if any)
operating with the 20 year plan at the end of which assemblers are
going to show up, assuming absolutely everything goes right.
There are very few commercial research laboratories like the old Bell
Labs left, so that is going to be a pretty hard direction to go in as
well -- not to mention that you need a PhD to get yourself a job at
places like that.
This is not to say that I think people shouldn't be trying to get into
the field. I'm just laying out a warning, in advance, that finding a
way to use your degree and do real research is not going to be easy.
And with that, I'll end this -- it is far too long already.
Perry
.
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