Molecules Spontaneously Form Honycomb 106
Science Daily is reporting that University of California Researchers have discovered a new process in which molecules assemble into complex patterns without any outside guidance. From the article: "Spreading anthraquinone, a common and inexpensive chemical, on to a flat copper surface, Greg Pawin, a chemistry graduate student working in the laboratory of Ludwig Bartels, associate professor of chemistry, observed the spontaneous formation of a two-dimensional honeycomb network comprised of anthraquinone molecules."
Really cool, but surprising? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:crystals (Score:3, Insightful)
Its just doing it in another molecule.
I'm with the GP, its not earth shattering.
Re:Really cool, but surprising? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:importance? (Score:2, Insightful)
-- Jonathan Vos Post
Crappy article (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Really cool, but surprising? (Score:5, Insightful)
What's cool about this (as near as I can tell from the junior high-school level article) is that the structures are supramolecular, many orders of magnitude larger than the anthraquinone molecules they are made of. The structures seems to be held together only by (weak) van der Waals interactions between the molecules, influenced by the copper substrate. This is interesting and unusual, if you know enough chemistry to appreciate it.
I'd love to see x-ray diffraction of these layers, to see how the anthraquinones are packing, and how the symmetry of the molecules is reflected in the much larger honeycomb.
Re:Honycomb? (Score:2, Insightful)
Saturday morning cartoons (Score:4, Insightful)
Nope. Rather, Slashdot is populated mostly by the same demographic who grew up watching Saturday morning cartoons many, many years ago before they all turned into lame crap.
Comma's... (Score:1, Insightful)
6 Comma's; one butchered, unreadable sentance, and the entire article's like that.
What happened to the days writers used things such as paragraphs, periods, and semicolons, and grammar? Oh wait, I know what happened; Some dipshit decided to try to introduce metered speech, a hypnotism technique, into news articles to make them sound more official. So now we've got poindexter here, managing the pauses in his text so anyone who can speed-read it ends up in a train wreck and anyone who reads it like a 3rd grader ends up thinking it's some great discovery. While the rest of humanity who still has their brains intact, looks at it flat out and thinks to themselves "and the point of reading this is?".
News for nerds my ass.
Re:Saturday morning cartoons (Score:4, Insightful)
They're crap. What we watched was crap then, and what kids watch nowadays is crap as well.
It's just that we were kids and couldn't tell it was crap, so we developed fond memories of it.