Why is nanotechnology so important?
The reason why nanotechnology is so important is that, at the atomic level, molecules can behave differently than they do at our level. For example, we all know what gold looks like -- it is yellow, shiny, and metallic. But when you take just a few atoms of gold and deal with it at the nano level, it is nothing like that. For one thing, it can actually look pink.

Image courtesy NASA Digital model of a carbon nanotube

By building things at the nano level, people are working with individual atoms or a handful of atoms and taking advantage of these different properties. The advantages can be huge. Let's take batteries as an example. A battery is full of chemicals that make electricity. The chemicals are normally powders or gels. But by forming the chemicals into nano-particles, the batteries work much better. This is because when you make the particles super-small, you increase the number of atoms that are exposed for the chemical reaction. Now, the reaction can happen much faster and/or more completely. Therefore, the battery can store more energy, and it can charge a lot faster. Today it might take two hours to charge a cell phone. In the future, it will only take two minutes.

Nanotech in Computers Right now, microprocessors are already at teh nano level. A typical wire on a modern microprocessor chip is only 90 nanometers across. Over the next 10 years or so, these wires will shrink down to 20 nanometers -- possibly even 10. At that level, there would actually be less than 50 silicon atoms across the width of the wire!