About This Lesson
At micro scale sizes, 3D structures are too small to be assembled by any machine and must be guided to assemble on their own. Now, interdisciplinary research by engineers at Johns Hopkins University and mathematicians at Brown University has led to a breakthrough showing that higher order polyhedra can indeed fold up and assemble themselves. With support from the National Science Foundation, mathematician Govind Menon and engineer David Gracias are developing self-assembling 3-D micro and nanostructures which can be used in a number of applications, including medicine.
