Cotton Candy Research Paper
It's just sugar, right? Candy -- kids' stuff. Well, don't be too sure. In the hands of top engineers and scientists, ordinary sugar is doing some extraordinary things.
Circus Candy Inspires a Medical Miracle
Talk about sweet science; medical researchers are building artificial body parts using (believe it or not) cotton candy.
If you've ever eaten it, you know how tangled (and sticky!) cotton candy can be. Those traits come via some surprising science. Cotton candy is made from almost pure sugar. Inside a cotton candy machine, that sugar is first melted into a liquid, and then fed into a strainer covered with very tiny holes. As the strainer spins, the liquid sugar sprays out as fine, hot jets. These solidify almost instantly, on hitting …show more content…
Unlike batteries (which must be replaced or recharged), fuel cells keep working simply by adding more fuel. NASA already uses fuel cells to power some of its deep space probes. However, these fuel cells are powered by exotic fuels such as hydrogen. By contrast, "bio" fuel cells would run on glucose (blood sugar). Like cell respiration, these cells combine the sugar with oxygen, to release energy. However, the chemical process they use is very different. It depends on complex enzymes, which act as the electrodes (plus and minus terminals) of the fuel cell. Since the cell must be implanted in the body, its parts are made from nonreacting materials, including …show more content…
But can you use sugar to catch something much smaller -- like a bacterium?
That would solve a pressing medical need. Some types of bacterial infections can prove challenging for doctors to treat. One problem is distinguishing these infections from other types of illness. But now, researchers have a way to spot that difference. They're using a special kind of sugar -- one that glows in the dark.
Just like humans (and most other life forms), bacteria use sugar to get the energy they need. However, their sweet tooth operates differently from ours. Bacteria get their sugar from a carbohydrate called maltohexaose. But humans (and most animals) can't use this.
So biomedical engineers at Georgia Tech whipped up a special batch of maltohexaose, adding a molecule called a fluorescent tag. When struck by the correct wavelength of light, these molecules glow. (They absorb and then re-emit the light.)
Released into the bloodstream, human cells ignore this shiny sugar. But when bacteria consume it, it makes them glow, too. In laboratory tests on animals, the new treatment caused superficial bacterial infections to shine right through the
Circus Candy Inspires a Medical Miracle
Talk about sweet science; medical researchers are building artificial body parts using (believe it or not) cotton candy.
If you've ever eaten it, you know how tangled (and sticky!) cotton candy can be. Those traits come via some surprising science. Cotton candy is made from almost pure sugar. Inside a cotton candy machine, that sugar is first melted into a liquid, and then fed into a strainer covered with very tiny holes. As the strainer spins, the liquid sugar sprays out as fine, hot jets. These solidify almost instantly, on hitting …show more content…
Unlike batteries (which must be replaced or recharged), fuel cells keep working simply by adding more fuel. NASA already uses fuel cells to power some of its deep space probes. However, these fuel cells are powered by exotic fuels such as hydrogen. By contrast, "bio" fuel cells would run on glucose (blood sugar). Like cell respiration, these cells combine the sugar with oxygen, to release energy. However, the chemical process they use is very different. It depends on complex enzymes, which act as the electrodes (plus and minus terminals) of the fuel cell. Since the cell must be implanted in the body, its parts are made from nonreacting materials, including …show more content…
But can you use sugar to catch something much smaller -- like a bacterium?
That would solve a pressing medical need. Some types of bacterial infections can prove challenging for doctors to treat. One problem is distinguishing these infections from other types of illness. But now, researchers have a way to spot that difference. They're using a special kind of sugar -- one that glows in the dark.
Just like humans (and most other life forms), bacteria use sugar to get the energy they need. However, their sweet tooth operates differently from ours. Bacteria get their sugar from a carbohydrate called maltohexaose. But humans (and most animals) can't use this.
So biomedical engineers at Georgia Tech whipped up a special batch of maltohexaose, adding a molecule called a fluorescent tag. When struck by the correct wavelength of light, these molecules glow. (They absorb and then re-emit the light.)
Released into the bloodstream, human cells ignore this shiny sugar. But when bacteria consume it, it makes them glow, too. In laboratory tests on animals, the new treatment caused superficial bacterial infections to shine right through the