Thinking Outside of the Toy Box: 4 Children's Gizmos That Inspired Scientific Breakthroughs [Slide Show]
Brilliant minds reach back to childhood to help them develop tiny transistors, study particle separation, make microfluidics devices, and fight cancer
Thinking Outside of the Toy Box: 4 Children's Gizmos That Inspired Scientific Breakthroughs [Slide Show]
- FLOATING AN IDEA TO FIGHT CANCER Harvard Medical School's Shiladitya Sengupta and other cancer treatment researchers wanted to transport chemotherapy drugs inside a tumor after blocking its blood supply. He realized the balloon-within-a-balloon structure could help him tackle the drug delivery challenge and developed a nanocell containing different drugs in each of its two layers... © PIONEER BALLOON COMPANY
- OUT OF THE OVEN Khine developed a technique to make microfluidics chips directly from Shrinky Dink plastic. Now Shrink Nanotechnologies creates products such as stem cell research devices and solar cells using a polymer that shrinks 95 percent and does so more consistently than the toy that served as its inspiration... © SHRINK NANOTECHNOLOGIES INC.
- FUN WITH MICROFLUIDICS Johns Hopkins University chemical and biomolecular engineering assistant professors German Drazer [ seen here ] and Joelle Frechette placed a large Lego board with cylindrical Lego pegs vertically in a fish tank filled with glycerol, a viscous liquid... © WILL KIRK AND JOHNS HOPKINS