Manipulating Matter at Spatial Limit
Green College Coach House - February 12, 2003

Hari Manoharan

Department of Physics, Stanford University

Throughout history, we have sought to expand our mastery of the material world. Our ability to manipulate matter has been continuously refined, extending to constructions of colossal size and extreme complexity. Progress in the opposite direction of diminishing scale has proved increasingly vital to society. Well-known contemporary examples include the micro-electronic and bio-technology industries. The efforts within these fields rely predominantly on new tools that extend control and measurements to progressively smaller length scales.

Instead of this "top-down" approach, what if we proceed from bottom up? For the first time, we are poised to explore critical science starting from the basic building blocks of matter - single atoms. So the question now becomes: rather than work our way down from the macroscopic level, what can we learn if we build up from that quantum realm? The answers, not surprisingly, seem both varied and deep. This talk will survey recent scientific discoveries engendered by the technology of atomic and molecular manipulation

More information On Hari Manohara can be viewed from the Stanford Web Site.

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