Dr. Christine Jurasinski LabLearner Staff Scientist
For third, fourth and eighth grade students in the LabLearner Program, learning about charges and circuits means learning about electricity. From electrical power plants to microchips, electricity has been one of the mainstays of our world’s technology and a key component in telecommunication devices. A recent discovery from scientists at Yale University, however, may pave the way for that to change.
Dr. Hong Tang and a team of researchers at Yale University work in a field called nanophotonics. To understand what that means let’s take the word “nanophotonics” apart. Photonics describes technology that uses light to transfer information. Fiber optics, optical scanners, lasers, and satellite imaging are all examples of photonic technologies. What makes ‘nanophotonics” different is that the technological research or applications occur on a much, much smaller scale. “Nano” literally means one billionth of something. For Dr. Tang and his team, their research in nanophotonics deals with silicon microchips. Recently, these scientists made a discovery that may allow silicon microchips and other nanodevices to work using light rather than electricity.
So, why is this exciting news and what may this mean about what LabLearner students learn about electricity?
What’s exciting is that Dr. Tang and his associates discovered a repulsive and attractive force of light. Since about 2005 many scientists have theorized that small beams of light could attract or repel each other when placed very close together- such as on a silicon chip. This attraction or repulsive force was proposed to be similar to the electromagnetic forces that occur between positive and negative charges, a phenomenon that LabLearner students investigate in the Exploring Electricity CELL in third grade and the Electricity and Magnetism CELL in eighth grade.
Now, however, that phenomenon is no longer theory. The researchers at Yale University showed that they can produce a beam of light on a silicon microchip that has a repulsive force and a beam of light that has an attractive force. What’s more they showed that that both beams of light could physically MOVE very small switches called nanoswitches in circuits on the microchip, turning circuits in the microchip on and off.
Does this mean that soon we’ll be able to take flashlights and move objects around? An interesting thought, but no. These newly discovered optical forces are very strong on the nanoscale, but too weak on much larger scales. For example, even focused light such as that found in two laser pointers can’t cause the laser pointers to attract or repel each other.
However, when you think about the type of energy and scale that is involved in something like fiber optic communications, this discovery could be potentially revolutionary. The reason is that many technologies such as fiber-optic communications work by converting light signals into electrical signals and then converting the electrical signals back to light signals, all on a micro and nanoscale. This new discovery suggests that light alone could be used to manipulate signals and move switches. This would make telecommunication and other nanodevices like microchips much, much faster and cheaper.
And what about those LabLearner students? Will this leap in technology make learning about electricity a thing of the past? As with all new technology and with all areas of science, understanding basic principles provides a solid foundation on which to build. Although the repulsive and attractive forces of light are a new and complex discovery, the basic principles of attraction and repulsion remain. These principles are the basis of students’ experiments about static electricity in the third grade CELL Exploring Electricity. In this CELL, students explore what is meant by positive and negative charges, and attraction and repulsion. Through their experiments they see and FEEL a very tangible example of how difference in charges can create at attractive or repulsive force. It is this type of knowledge that sets the stage for understanding what is meant by an attractive or repulsive force of light. As students move into fourth grade they explore energy transformations in the Forms of Energy CELL. Understanding that energy is neither created or destroyed but only changes forms can help students understand the energy transformations of technologies like fiber-optics. Finally as students move into eighth grade and the Electricity and Magnetism CELL, they begin to combine mathematical formulas with tangible evidence of electric and magnetic attractive and repulsive forces. The basic foundation about charges, attraction, repulsion and forces that they build through the LabLearner Program may just lead them to be the designers that harness the attraction and repulsive forces of light in the decades to come.
Not bad indeed , thanks for the information