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 In school we looked into
microscopes and thrilled at the miniature world we saw. With
electron microscopy we were stunned at
the stark detail on the tiniest things we could imagine. That
kind of science
still exists and works for us well.
But
we have gone deeper.
We have recently
opened the lid and peered into a sub miniature or submicroscopic realm
where all
the rules are different.
Like-polarity particles hang together (instead of repel) in specific
clumps. Then they synergistically combine with other like clumps and
work together to do things we never thought could be done before. This
phenomenon has always
existed since creation. It’s just that we are
now discovering how to harness
it to accomplish some amazingly wonderful results.
For
perspective, a human
hair is 80,000 nanometers thick; a red blood cell covers 10,000
nanometers; a
virus measures 100 nanometers across. These micelles, which possess the
power
and capability to break down organic molecules
and hydrocarbons, are the workhorses
behind Nano/colloidal
technology's effectiveness as a
cleaning, degreasing, emulsifying and encapsulating agent. So
a
micelle is about 1 to 4 % of the size of a microscopic virus.
 |
 There
is no doubt that the
chemical properties of these products have a profound effect in their
own
right. Yet their single most
important
feature may be their size –
the ability to deliver their chemical effect in
places and ways not possible before. Relating to medical terms, when we
are
sick, the medicine of choice needs to get where it will do the most
good in the
fastest way possible, whether a pill by mouth, an injection in a
muscle, an IV
in a vein, or a fast-dissolving lozenge or strip under the tongue. In
our instance, the micelles are breaking the problem down to its
smallest common denominator and taking care of business.
Referencing the illustration to the left, try to wrap your mind around
a watery magnetic machine, as it were, that has all of its negative
polarity on the outside -- like a kajillion hungry Pac-Men(R) starving
for hydrocarbons -- with
the positive polarity on the inside pointed to its core. It
specifically targets organic molecules or compounds such as oil and
petroleum-based products and breaks them down into pieces or particles
so tiny that they fit deep inside the nano cluster where they are held
in a magnetic prison in something somewhat akin to a minuscule black
hole.
 Once inside
the micelles, oil particles are not able to re-bond
with other oil
particles. So as slick as they collectively might have been in a former
situation, they will
never be a slick again. The whole of it has been completely
emulsified (broken
down) and encapsulated (put in a harmless sheath of water).
In
this state, some or all of it can be rinsed and sent
anywhere without damage to anything. Each tiny particle is highly
susceptible to attack
by naturally occurring bacteria which can now feed upon the oil
particle
and totally devour it without becoming overwhelmed and suffocated by
it. And, as explained earlier, this functioning
"engine" is no bigger than about twenty hydrogen atoms across. (In
fact, some scientists are postulating that it is even tinier than
that!) Oil
spills and pollution never see these bad boys coming. And
yet,
having done their job, within about thirty days the nano-colloid
micelles
(the botanically based soap products) will be some eighty percent
biodegraded -- returned to the soil from which they originally sprang
in
plant form.
But there's more . .
. !
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things as simple 
