Maya Blue

The chapter “What is Technology?” in my book Technology Challenged forced me to deal with the definition of technology as “applied science.” I wrote that, even though some dictionaries use it, I find that definition poor. Here’s a colorful example of just how poor.

Buried deep in the darkness of an abandoned well is indigo. In Mexico’s Yucatan, this blue pigment was painted on both humans and pottery, which were sacrificed to the gods and cast down the well. The same pigment made the sky of ancient murals as enduring as the sky above, even as other colors faded. It is called "Maya Blue."

Mayans must have been both lucky and keen observers to devise a mixture with a property that reveals itself ever so slowly. Today, we have the technology to view the nanometer scale—measured in billionths of a meter—that underlies their accomplishment. And we have developed a scientific understanding of it.

What ancient Mayans knew: set incense aflame to cook the flowering plant Añil with clay to create a blue that lasts.

What modern scientists know: heat can embed aniline, a bright indigo chemical from the plant Indigofera suffruticosa, into the natural clay palygorskite, which provides a protective lattice. This hybrid of “plant for color” and “mineral for structure” is the magic of a coloration that pays little attention to time or weather.

Science is wonderful. It predicts much and, after the fact, can explain more. Technology can come from application of science, but it has, at times, preceded scientific explanation by centuries. Even today, with the pace of both technology and science so rapid, technology can precede science. High-temperature superconductors are one area I’m aware that exhibits this order. Click on the comment link below to add those you know about.

Putting Rustlike Crystals on ICE

Every year I spend four fabulous weeks teaching precocious high school students about nanotechnology. The COSMOS program at the University of California at Santa Cruz has classes on physics, chemistry, astronomy, math puzzles, marine biology, designing and creating video games, robotics, and nanotechnology. Similar programs run at UC Davis, UC Irvine, and UC San Diego.

My recent silence on this blog has been, in part, due to preparation for and running of the just-completed program. Students went home last Saturday and I am ready to share some of what I experienced.

Learning a strategy for understanding and evaluating nanotechnology is particularly important because students will forget most of the technical details about...

• Genetically modifying extremophile bacteria to create nanoscale grids of magnetic storage elements
• Sequencing DNA and RNA through nanopores (using control theory students learn in robotics)
• Seeking inspiration from the mind-boggling accuracy of replicating a single cell to create a human being
  
• Using the Peltier Effect to remove heat from very small hot spots on integrated circuits...and reversing the semiconductor phenomenon to capture energy from waste heat
• Interfacing the mechanical to the electronic on very small scale with Micro Electro Mechancial Systems (MEMS)
  

One way we practiced ICE-9 was applying it to news reports about nanotechnology. Clicking on the above image will show a New York Times article dissected with ICE-9. It applies nearly anywhere...and familiarity with it may the greatest gift I can impart in just four weeks to my students. As most of them are academically at the top of their high schools, I look forward to the dispersal of the ICE-9 meme to universities everywhere.