Nanotubes get into gear for new roll

From Minneapolis, at a meeting of the American Physical Society

Rolling, rolling, rolling. Keep those nanotubes rolling.

Carbon nanotubes are slender, hollow, cylindrical molecules of pure carbon. Extraordinarily strong and flexible, with intriguing electronic properties, the microscopic tubes offer scientists pure fascination (SN: 8/21/99, p. 127).

Now, Michael R. Falvo and Richard Superfine of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and their colleagues may have discovered why the tubes sometimes roll and at other times slide when pushed across a graphite surface by the tip of an atomic-force microscope.