Convertin’ a constant force into an oscillatin’ one is a useful
trick. Ya’ll seen em: gravity-powered pendulums and wind-powered
turbines for example, them both set machines a-spinin and
a-swingin by exploitin’ a constant force. Them machines might
work sweetly at macroscopic scales but ain’t nobody cracked it
on the nanoscale even though nanobods are a-chompin at the bit
to reproduce this trick. The trouble is that gravity ain’t
strong enough at this level and as for wind, who you kiddin?
That leaves only tricky-dicky forces from the dizzy world of
electrostatics and magnetics and these are so poorly understood
on tiny scales that them nanobods are still a-wondrin and
a-ponderin over how to harness them. But Hyun “Mighty” Kim and
his crew at the University of Wisconsin-Madison say they cracked
it. Their device is a kinda nano-mushroom that stands between
the plates of a capacitor, in a constant DC field. Give the
mushroom a push and it leans towards the source electrode where
electrons tunnel across into the