Atoms and Molecules
The systematic study, manipulation, and modification of atoms and molecules having nanometer-sized dimensions began several hundred years ago. Society has benefited greatly because chemists can use chemical reactions to combine several types of atoms to create new types of molecules. With the advent of quantum physics, physicists, chemists and biologists routinely studied the spectra of atoms and molecules. Biochemists discovered the usefulness of all types of molecules from proteins to enzymes to DNA several decades ago.
Until recently however, working with and controlling atoms and molecules was limited to large quantities of these nanometer-sized objects. Realistically, chemists would modify hundreds of trillions of molecules in a typical chemical reaction. When chemists synthesize new molecules, they make them in large quantities by using macroscopic methods such as heat to initiate chemical reactions. Biologists can identify and create new types of genetic material, but only on a large number of molecules.
|
