(June 24, 2015) Chemistry
professor Linda Shimizu oversees a series of crowd-pleasing chemistry
demonstrations in middle and high schools throughout central South Carolina
every year. They are spirited affairs, and her research in the laboratory is
just as dynamic — but with a sense of order that really keeps atoms in line.
Shimizu’s lab recently developed a new system for studying
gas flow in the most constricted environment possible. She and her co-workers
have synthesized tubes so narrow that atoms can only move through them in single
file.
Her team builds the tiny tubes by harnessing a process
rooted in a molecular kind of self-love. The chemists first synthesize a cyclic
organic compound — a molecular doughnut, if you will — that, by design, has an
affinity for its own kind. When the molecular doughnuts are dissolved in a
solvent and encounter each other in solution, they stack end-to-end like a roll
of Life-Savers.