Nanotechnology labs through the eyes of a school student
Raroa Intermediate student William Holmes, a winner of the 2014 NIWA Science Fair, writes about his experience touring nanotechnology labs at Victoria University.
My name is William Holmes, and as of now I am 12, going on 13. I won a prize at the NIWA Science Fair 2014 from the cancer society area. Anyway, Harry Warring is studying nanotechnology at Victoria University. And I got invited to have a private tour of some of the labs. There were three labs we visited in total (all of which were really cool). But the main focuses were liquid gases, lasers and growing metal. Let’s begin shall we?
The first room we visited had liquid gases in it, we just played with liquid nitrogen (because it’s the safest to use compared to what else was there). But next to us was a tank that was about 140 centimetres tall and 50 centimetres wide. Although, it only held 20 litres of liquid helium. The rest was set to cooling it so the helium didn't evaporate. Guess how cold liquid helium is? Four degrees Kelvin. How cold is that? Well four degrees Celsius above the minimum temperature possible. And Kelvin’s temperature is -273.15, so Liquid Helium’s temperature is a bone chilling -269 degrees Celsius. Which is freezing!
The next room we entered was the laser room. The main device inside this room was a huge contraption of mirrors and amplifiers that started with a simple laser. In this room the main thing they were doing was magnifying a laser onto metals and uses a microscope to see how the laser interfered with the objects and see what happened down on the atomic layer. The room had two machines though, same purpose but one was quite a bit older than the other. But was still really cool and interesting. Sadly though, someone else was already in the lab and running some tests.
For our third and final part of the tour we got to enter a room with a massive tank (worth hundreds of thousands of dollars). In the tank what looked like nothing, was nothing! But a bit more interesting nothing compared to your usual nothing. The chamber was empty of all gases. Making it one of the cleanest places in Wellington. In the actual tank itself the atmospheric pressure was about a billionth of what the pressure outside the tank was.
So what they did in the tank was actually grow metals. Which sounds impossible but using the pressured air metal had formed on the sides when gas was removed. An example was gold grown on glass, but the gold was about as thick as a hair strand, which thanks to the glass. Was see through! Finally in that room was a "container". More like a vault. It had all the metals that had to be contained so they didn’t rust. But to keep that door sealed it has a vacuum in it. This meant that every gas in the room pushed against it. Over all it had over a tonne keeping it sealed and pushing against it, which made it bloody hard to even try open!
Overall I really enjoyed the tour, it lasted about one hour total. But we spent nearly half of the time in the third room. My only wondering right now is what would liquid helium look like? Because if revealed to normal air it would just evaporate into gas. But in the end it was a really fun tour and I would love to do it again.