• Question: How would you move nano molecules around without damaging them or losing them?

    Asked by dphillips174 to Adam on 15 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: Adam Murphy

      Adam Murphy answered on 15 Nov 2013:


      You can do it with one of my favourite things, lasers! They’re called optical tweezers

      Light has force, and it can push things! Now light doesn’t have a lot of force, but a finely tuned laser can push little things!

      If we use special lenses we can focus all the “push” a laser has into a tiny spot which we can move around. Little things we want to move can get trapped in this spot and then we can push and move them around, even in 3 Dimensions!

      At the moment, we use optical tweezers for moving tiny biological things around. It’s a really important technique!

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