A Turn for the Better

by Philip Ball Nature Materials Update, 8 Sep 2005 A torsion pendulum, in which an object attached to a rod swings back and forth by twisting of the rod, has been constructed from a single carbon nanotube by researchers in Germany and France. The researchers watched a metal block about 500 nm wide -- big enough to see in an optical microscope -- turn back and forth while attached to the midpoint of a single-walled carbon nanotube acting as a torsion spring. The block could rotate by as much as half a complete revolution without breaking or damaging the nanotube. Read more