Everything in this world is a wave. At the macro scale, typical wavelengths are tiny. Hence, the wave behavior is washed out. However, diminishing the length scale gradually strengthens the wave nature. At the nanoscale, the wave effects could be strong enough to be felt. Wave effects result in new phenomena. And, controlling them offers a powerful tool to design materials with exotic properties. Hence, ‘nano’ is interesting.
An example from our daily life is oil spit on water. Oil in a glass bottle is simply transparent and does not look anything interesting. If we drop the same oil into a bucket of water, we see rainbow colors! Oil forms a thin film (few microns) on the top of the water and creates colors. The thin oil film causes some colors in the light to resonate and look brighter at certain angles. Thus, we see a rainbow. Thin or small dimensions are thus interesting, and so is nano!
Author: Dr. Gururaj Naik.
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