Home > Press > Rice crew revved for Nanocar Race: Nanocar creator James Tour and team take on international competition with single-molecule marvel
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An early nanocar with buckyball wheels was created by the lab of Rice University chemist James Tour. A late model will compete in the first Nanocar Race in France April 28. (Credit: Tour Group/Rice University) |
Abstract:
Rice University chemist James Tour and members of his international team will meet in Toulouse, France, next week for the first Nanocar Race, a competition between single-molecule cars on a track that can only be viewed through a microscope.
The race begins April 28 at 4 a.m. Central Daylight Time. It pits the team from Rice and Graz University in Austria against competitors from France, Switzerland, Germany, Japan and Ohio University.
It will take place on a cold gold surface under a one-of-a-kind scanning tunneling microscope with a resolution of 2 picometers, or 1/1,000th of a nanometer.
A live stream of the competition can be viewed in several ways:
-- On the race website at http://nanocar-race.cnrs.fr.
-- On the event's YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/channel/UCkQixqt0xegeVEmo9y9gMXQ.
-- And on Facebook: www.facebook.com/events/294623327625032/.
Tour's lab built the world's first nanocar in 2005, a single molecule with four buckyball wheels, a chassis and axles. His lab has since expanded its molecular gallery to nanoroadsters, nanosubmarines and even nanokids.
Tour is the T.T. and W.F. Chao Chair in Chemistry as well as a professor of computer science and of materials science and nanoengineering at Rice.
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About Rice University
Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation’s top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 3,879 undergraduates and 2,861 graduate students, Rice’s undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is ranked No. 1 for happiest students and for lots of race/class interaction by the Princeton Review. Rice is also rated as a best value among private universities by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance. To read “What they’re saying about Rice,” go to http://tinyurl.com/RiceUniversityoverview .
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Contacts:
David Ruth
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Mike Williams
713-348-6728
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