Good things come in small packages.

A few days ago one of my co-workers, on being accused of being short, replied with what is translated, "The most expensive perfume comes in the smallest bottle." This is, of course, meant to be the Spanish version of our, "Good things come in small packages." addage.

Speaking of small, the Micro scale is small but the Nano (pronounced like 'banano') scale is even smaller. If you were going to pick up a nano-particle, you'd likely be able to count the number of molecules in your picker-upper. There would be around 100 - give or take. The next smallest scale is the atomic scale, where-in we deal in single molecules only.

Carbon nano-tubes (or just nano tubes) are carbon tubes engineered to be so small that they could be clogged by only a picker-upper full of molecules. They are often created by evaporating carbons and then reassembling them in a the form of a sheet. The sheet is then rolled into a tube. Kind'a like rolling a piece of paper with which to look through your hand. Or for my fellow Texans - like rolling your own cigar. Oh, that reminds me- but I digress.

Noelle informed me, the other day, that there are two common types of nano carbon. One has a single layer wall; the other is multi-layered. The multi-layer flavor is cheaper than the single layer flavor because the method for creating single layer carbon nano-tubing leaves impurities which must later be removed. While not exactly perfume, carbon in this form is the most expensive material on earth - pound for pound - bringing in about $275,000 a kilogram. I think that's about $7,800/oz. From a business standpoint, anyone wanting to earn an extra $250 ,000 this weakend would have only to devise a way of producing this stuff $25,000 scheaper per kilo. Just as plastic was touted as, "...the miracle of the 20th century...", so the wonder of the 21st century will be nano-engineered materials (You thought I was going to say "Obama", didn't you?).