A Thermometer In A Nanotube 18
Stone Rhino writes: "Yet another marvel has been created in the quest to create minature machines: a thermometer of liquid gallium within a carbon nanotube. The New York Times has an article on this. The thermometer is 10 microns long and measures temperatures from 120-950 degrees farenheit. Of course, the part I find most impractical about it is the fact that you need a scanning electron microscope to read it."
Re:sounds interesting... (Score:4, Insightful)
But that's irrelevant, as this thermometer uses Gallium is #31 (the first element to be predicted before it was discovered), and Gallium is much bigger than carbon. But that's why the carbon is arranged into tubes - multiple atoms across, able to hold gallium atoms.
What I want to know, is if using the SEM to read the temp changes the temp? All those impinging electrons must raise the kinetic energy of the Gallium atoms at least a little?