Lego Blocks Simulate Microfluidic Filters

BuzzSkyline writes "Researchers at Johns Hopkins University are playing with Lego blocks to discover how arrays of nanoscopic obstacles could sort cells and other tiny particles by size. Ball bearings dropped through an array of Lego pieces submerged in glycerin serve as an analogue of the tiny systems, with bearings of different sizes taking different paths through the array. An academic paper describing the Lego research recently appeared in the journal Physical Review Letters (subscription required)."

I hate when headlines do this.

[johnthorensen]

Reporters and the like are always trying to get an 'angle' obviously, but still - it's a little lame to emphasize the Lego portion of this. I love Legos, but let's face it - this apparatus could have been built out of many other things. The real 'science' behind this story is the construction of a scale model and details upon how the researchers were able to prove similitude [wikipedia.org] between the large and micro scales. Not that pop sci articles aren't valuable, but using Lego as a hook to a legitimate science publication seems gimmicky.