Nanoparticles Just Happen

Jack Kerouac once said that he wanted to write like Charlie Parker played the saxophone. Having listened to my share of The Bird, I can understand Kerouac's fascination with the man. He played so fast, so beautifully, or originally that it seems unreal. There is not a lot of sheet music for what he did, just a melody for a few bars and then... improvisation, pure art, never the same two takes in a row. Nanoscience is like that most days. I have a sheet of chemical formula and then I mix some stuff and... nanoparticles just happen, maybe. Some really smart person called the process "Self-Assembly" and in a nut shell it means we make little polymers that, under the right conditions, want to make themselves into nanoparticles. Just figuring out what shape and size our nanoparticles are is an art. Since we can't see them with our eyes, or even a regular microscope we use a lot of uber-geek gear to try and detect them. What gets really humbling is that as I struggle to make little spheres reproducibly, under highly controlled conditions, my body is making polymers and nanoparticles constantly, perfectly. I am talking about DNA, RNA, proteins... They are just polymers, and they automatically fold up into the right shape. If they are not the right shape, the body detects them and either unfolds them so they can try again, or it destroys them. I wish I could make nanoparticles like my body.