Trivia

I was invited to the Frontiers of Engineering meeting organized by the NAE recently. These meetings are often fun, with speakers discussing large swaths of impressive engg achievements. The nanotechnology talks were great, defining it as as technology that manipulated materials at 10-100nm size where the material had different properties (mechanical, quantum, whatever) from its "native" state. I liked the demos, eg., sheets with ceramic nanoparticle layers that can be applied to even convex walls of bathroom much like wallpaper. Also, the dinner talk by David Billington of Princeton Univ who spoke about major engineering achievements between 1870's and 1930's in US, was terrific. My favorite was his discussion about building the George Washington Bridge. Watch out for his book.

I quipped: are we going to have nano-managers? (nano-, micro-).

Btw, there is a collection of animals in New Brunswick that is a mini-(even micro-?) Zoo. It has Dolly the Llama. I am not kidding.