As I was saying, reporters frequently have next to no understanding of what they’re writing about. This article on nanotechnology by CNN reporter Marsha Walton is a great example. I won’t bore you by pointing out all the problems it has, but consider this section:
Noisy atoms found
Physicists studying nanotech made another serendipitous find: They discovered that atoms make noise.
Atoms are moved from one location to another with a special type of electric current known as a tunneling current. Monitoring the sound of that manipulation reveals a sort of "cry of protest" from the atom.
"That jumping back and forth, between its preferred place and where we are really forcing it to be, turns out to make this noise," Celotta said.
The idea that atoms make protest noises like calves being prodded during a round up is interesting, but it isn’t the literal truth. Remember: We’re talking about the motion of an individual atom, folks, and sound does not exist on that level. Sound is "mechanical radiant energy that is transmitted by longitudinal pressure waves in a material medium (as air) and is the objective cause of hearing" (Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary). One atom by itself cannot make a sound because it is not a medium. Only a bunch of atoms together (like a collection of air molecules) can be a medium.
I suspect that the physicists the reporter was talking to were trying to simply things for her and use the term "noise" metaphorically, referring perhaps to an energy emission from the atom as it is jostled out of place by tunneling current. That emission could be monitored by sensitive equipment, but it isn’t sound in the literal sense. The reporter, apparently not knowing enough to separate metaphor from reality, passed it off to her readers as the literal truth. One more for the "reporter doesn’t understand the subject of the report" file.
I do have to admit that I liked one bit of the story, in which a scientist said:
"Early on, the scanning tunneling microscope was more used like an archeologist’s tool, where you were seeing things for the first time. "It was like Galileo looking up at the stars, but you were looking inward and saying, ‘Boy is that neat; I never imagined that would happen,’ " Celotta said.
"And now we are getting more like mankind tends to be, rearranging it the way we want it," he added.
Cool. I support rearranging things the way we want them. That’s what humans do. Atoms should be pushed out of their comfortable positions and rounded up into configurations that are useful to humans.
Keep movin’, movin’, movin’
Though they’re disapprovin’
Keep them dogies movin’
Rawhide!
Don’t try to understand ’em
Just rope, throw, and brand ’em
Soon we’ll be living high and wide.
My hearts calculatin’
My true love will be waitin’,
Be waitin’ at the end of my ride.
Rawhide!
