Nanotechnology Now

Our NanoNews Digest Sponsors







Heifer International

Wikipedia Affiliate Button


Home > Press > Musical video, 'The Nano Song,' a megahit on YouTube: Cal contest entry explains nanotechnology to a gaggle of dancing puppets

Abstract:
How would you explain "nanotechnology" to a science novice? A group of UC Berkeley students and alums answered this call with a pint-sized video — part "Sound of Music," part Muppets, part Dan the Science Man — whose online reception has been anything but small.

Musical video, 'The Nano Song,' a megahit on YouTube: Cal contest entry explains nanotechnology to a gaggle of dancing puppets

Berkeley, CA | Posted on March 6th, 2009

"The Nano Song" features music and lyrics by the multi-talented Ryan Miyakawa, a 27-year-old pianist-composer and engineering grad student. UC Berkeley junior Glory Liu — a classics and political economy major with three years of classical music training — does the vocals, cheerfully explaining nanotechnology to a band of puppets: "A million nanometers that are lined up in a row/Are just about as long as a single flake of snow…." The piece went online Feb. 22, when the group submitted it to an American Chemical Society (ACS) contest, for Nano 101 videos no more than three minutes long.

Fame wasted no time. By early March, "The Nano Song" had spread virally, with mentions by PhysOrg.com, Scientific American, WIRED, and boingboing. When YouTube featured the video on its home page, it quickly racked up close to 300,000 hits (as of the first week of March), along with a mountain of comments from viewers, like "'Nano Song' is rocking the globe!"

"I turned comments off after the first 200," says Miyakawa.



Nanotechnology is a hot topic in science and engineering, but experts in the field have trouble explaining it to the uninitiated, he notes. On the nano-contest website — where ACS posts submissions and viewers vote for their favorites — he found many "boring" explanations of nano-scale particles at "10 to the minus nine." Instead, he says, "I wanted to do something fun that would be acceptable to the public."

To Miyakawa, a silly yet edifying song seemed to be in order. He spent a day composing a tune in 4/4/ time — using music software to lay down a big orchestral sound — and writing lyrics with K-to-adult appeal, with a refrain that goes: "Nano, nana, nano/ What a wonderful surprise/That ordinary is extraordinary/When you make it nano size!" Then Liu came over to practice. (The two met in a popular course, "Physics and Music," where he is a longtime grad-student instructor; together they once produced a song for an "American Idol" songwriting competition.) Turning the snappy nano song into a video was challenging — requiring the talents of Patrick Bennett (cinematography and editing) and a troupe of students and alums to build and manipulate puppets for the shoot.

"The Nano Song" is currently the top-rated and most-viewed contest submission (with more than 12,000 views on the ACS site). So its creators are "cautiously optimistic" about their chances for taking the $500 prize — which they hope to drop at Chez Panisse.

####

For more information, please click here

Contacts:
Cathy Cockrell
NewsCenter

Copyright © UC Berkeley

If you have a comment, please Contact us.

Issuers of news releases, not 7th Wave, Inc. or Nanotechnology Now, are solely responsible for the accuracy of the content.

Bookmark:
Delicious Digg Newsvine Google Yahoo Reddit Magnoliacom Furl Facebook

Related Links

To see "behind the scenes" photos of the video's making, or download an MP3, visit The Nano Song website.

The Nano Song video

Related News Press

Videos

3-D printing could lead to tiny medical implants, electronics, robots, more June 18th, 2013

News and information

Pioneering breakthrough of chemical nanoengineering to design drugs controlled by light June 18th, 2013

Study Shows How the Nanog Protein Promotes Growth of Head and Neck Cancer June 18th, 2013

New Method to Synthesize Zinc Oxide Nanoparticles with High Catalytic Activity June 18th, 2013

Production of Polyaniline Biosensors Modified with Conductive Polymer Composites June 18th, 2013

Academic/Education

CNSE Welcomes Record Number of Students, Majority of Whom are New Yorkers, for Prestigious Summer Internship Program June 12th, 2013

FEI and University of Oklahoma Begin Collaboration Research Agreement for Understanding and Developing Unconventional Oil and Gas Reservoirs: Collaboration effort will focus on new methods to classify shales in the economic assessment of “tight” resource plays June 7th, 2013

Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz obtains new Collaborative Research Center on "Nanodimensional polymer therapeutics for tumor therapy" June 2nd, 2013

Lorraine University uses Nanoparticle Tracking Analysis to characterize biomolecules for agrichemicals, pharmacology and cosmetics May 28th, 2013

Announcements

Pioneering breakthrough of chemical nanoengineering to design drugs controlled by light June 18th, 2013

Study Shows How the Nanog Protein Promotes Growth of Head and Neck Cancer June 18th, 2013

New Method to Synthesize Zinc Oxide Nanoparticles with High Catalytic Activity June 18th, 2013

Production of Polyaniline Biosensors Modified with Conductive Polymer Composites June 18th, 2013

NanoNews-Digest
The latest news from around the world, FREE







  Premium Products
NanoNews-Custom
Only the news you want to read!
 Learn More
NanoTech-Transfer
University Technology Transfer & Patents
 Learn More
NanoStrategies
Full-service, expert consulting
 Learn More












ASP
Nanotechnology Now Featured Books




NNN

The Hunger Project








abbigliamento uomo
Computer Accessories
© Copyright 1999-2013 7th Wave, Inc. All Rights Reserved PRIVACY POLICY :: CONTACT US :: STATS :: SITE MAP :: ADVERTISE