Well, it’s official!  Rice University is home to the Guinness World Record’s largest single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) model.  The 1,181 foot long, one-foot wide bright blue model built and assembled by over a hundred students, faculty and staff was officially measured and certified by U.S. District Court Judge Lynn N. Hughes and NASA astronaut Tracy Caldwell on April 22, 2005.

Rice faculty members Rick Smalley and Bob Curl (co-awarded the 1996 Nobel Prize in chemistry for their discovery of fullerenes) anchored the ends of the gigantic (by nano standards) model where giant yellow “electrons” (as soccer balls) were sent speeding from one end of the tube to the other.

Why build the world’s largest SWNT that is normally a billionth of a meter in width and one micrometer long? To make the “seriously small” carbon world visible and understandable to everyone!

A member of the fullerene family, carbon nanotubes are tiny cylinders of carbon atoms that have 100 times the strength of steel (at 1/6^th its weight) and have been proven to conduct electricity better than copper.

These amazing properties of SWNT may soon offer the world lighter materials for aircraft, stronger and lighter protective gear for police and military personnel, medical diagnostics, improved fuel cells, and simple luxuries like clothes that repel dirt!

A 200 foot section of the famous model will be on display at the Houston Museum of Natural Science.

See the judge's Certificate for model length!

What’s a SWNT?

SWNTs, or single-walled carbon nanotubes, are members of the fullerene family of carbon molecules, a unique form of carbon first discovered in Houston in 1985 at Rice University in the form of a buckyball.

SWNTs weigh one-sixth as much as steel, but are about 100 times stronger.

SWNTs are among the world’s best electrical conductors. They carry power as well as copper but weigh far less.

The scale model depicted an “armchair” SWNT that measures slightly less than one nanometer, or one billionth of a meter, in diameter and a little more than one micron, or millionth of a meter in length.

“Armchair” nanotubes are pure metals that conduct electricity at least as well as copper.

What will SWNTs be used for?

SWNTs have the potential to revolutionize energy production, storage and transport.

SWNTs have unique optical properties that may be used in revolutionary medical diagnostics that reduce the need for surgery and foster personalized, targeted healthcare.

NASA hopes to capitalize on the physical and electrical properties of carbon nanotubes to build stronger, lighter spacecraft; improved fuel cells; revolutionary “smart “ materials; optimized power systems and other technologies that revolutionize space travel.

SWNTs at Rice University

Rice University’s Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology (CNST), home to Nobel laureate and buckyball discoverer Richard Smalley’s Carbon Nanotechnology Laboratory, is the world’s premier nanotube research program.

CNST researchers are developing methods of spinning hundreds of millions of SWNTs into hair-like fibers. Once the methods are perfected, the fibers are expected to stronger than Kevlar^Ò, the superstrong fiber that’s found in bulletproof vests.

A six-inch fiber of pure SWNTs is about the thickness of a human hair. If the SWNTs in that fiber were the size of the World’s Largest Nanotube Model, the fiber would be more than four miles in diameter and would wrap around the Earth.