I thought this was really cool.
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[/float]Microscopic auto-body shop
To make the new nanodragster, Tour's team started with a previously built, off-the-shelf short axle and front wheel unit in their lab, which is sort of a nano-Monster Garage. They then chemically hooked this up to a pair of aligned hydrocarbon molecules called phenylene-ethynylene-the vehicle's chassis. The rear axle came next and finally the buckyball wheels went on.
Once the new nanocar gets rolling, it can reach speeds of up to nine nanomiles, or 0.014 millimeters (.0005 inches), per hour, which is relatively fast for their size, said Tour.
The tiny hot rods can also do tricks. "Because the front wheels don't stick to the surface as strongly, they're more prone to lift up, so [the nanodragster] does seem to pop a wheelie at times," Tour told TopTenREVIEWS.
By learning how to drive nanovehicles, Tour hopes to pave the way for small but technologically useful structures, such as electronics, that could be built atom-by-atom.
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