Question: How would you move nano molecules around without damaging them or losing them?

Adam Murphy answered on 15 Nov 2013:

You can do it with one of my favourite things, lasers! They’re called optical tweezers

Light has force, and it can push things! Now light doesn’t have a lot of force, but a finely tuned laser can push little things!

If we use special lenses we can focus all the “push” a laser has into a tiny spot which we can move around. Little things we want to move can get trapped in this spot and then we can push and move them around, even in 3 Dimensions!

At the moment, we use optical tweezers for moving tiny biological things around. It’s a really important technique!