Crikey, a car made up of only one molecule, I can think of no beginning of the practical applications for that…
There’s a nice article explaining clearly how they did it:
Ultimately the team decided to synthesize the axle and chassis via palladium-catalyzed coupling reactions.
I’m sure I would have chosen to do the same thing.
I love nanotech. There’s some great work being done to replicate solar panels that are energy-efficient to produce, and I can see why that kind of thing is useful, but I’m really lost as to the point of this exercise. I guess maybe it’s one of those things that people do as a proof of concept, so that when they do work out something to make with a practical application then they’ll have more of an idea of how to go about doing it, but for the moment this seems exceptionally pointless.
More, including a diagram which tells you very little, here.
I’ll leave the last, inconclusive, words to the writers of the article, who clearly also have no idea what a one-molecule car is for:
The development bodes opening new vistas.
You clearly have no insight into the mind of the science student. The answer to “why are you doing this?” is almost always “because it’s cool”.
This is soo cool! im completely intruiged with this concept… Think about it, we could put tiny explosives on these and send them to enemy worlds! or we could just simply say, “it’s cool” in the words of SeanH
I wonder home many circus clowns would be able to fit into THAT one.
As a chemistry student, I now feel it my duty to say:
“That’s cool!”