Name: 2016年のノーベル賞。化学と物理学が受賞! (The 2016 Nobel Prizes: Chemistry and Physics!)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T07:09:44.000Z
Duration: 4 min 49 s
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

It’s that time of the year again: around
October, the Nobel prize winners are announced,

and a few scientists around the world are
specially honored for their discoveries.

Olivia talked about the Physiology or Medicine
Prize last week, and now it’s Chemistry

This year’s Chemistry prize was shared between
three researchers, who all used molecules

Over billions of years of evolution, nature
has come up with lots of molecular machines,

from whip-like flagella that help cells move,
to enzymes that catalyze chemical reactions.

These researchers haven’t had that kind
of time, but their microscopic tools could

First up is the chemist Jean-Pierre Sauvage,
who wanted to see if molecules could be mechanically

Normally, different molecules are connected
by covalent chemical bonds between their atoms.

But Sauvage and his team used copper ions
to coax molecules into interlocking like links

This new way of linking molecules could be
used as part of a bigger microscopic machine,

The researchers even created a simple mechanical
system, where adding a bit of energy made

The second winner, J. Fraser Stoddart, synthesized
two different molecules that can be links

together as one machine: axles and rings.

The axle was basically a rod with bulky ends
and two middle bits packed full of electrons,

while the slightly-open ring didn’t have
many electrons.

Opposites attract, so the electron-poor rings
threaded onto the electron-rich rods when

Then, the team sealed up the rings with a
chemical reaction to mechanically lock them

onto the axles, creating these structures
called rotaxanes.

By adding some heat, the team could shuttle
the rings along the rods, and make tiny machines

that worked like elevators, muscles, and even
computer chips.

Lastly, the third scientist, Ben Feringa,
built a tiny molecular motor.

Free molecules are always getting jostled
around, so they tend to spin left and right

But Feringa’s team built a molecule out
of two flat structures that locks together,

so when they added UV light and heat, it only
spun in one direction.

The group’s first attempts in 1999 weren’t
all that speedy, but by 2014 they had a molecular

motor that spun at 12 million revolutions
per second.

They even built a nanocar with four motors
for wheels, which zipped forward across a

So, all these basic machines are neat ways
to make molecules spin and slide, but they’re

As scientists work to combine them, or build
entirely new structures, who knows what microscopic

technologies we’ll be building the future?

Now, the Physics prize this year went to three
theoretical physicists who are studying how

more extreme materials behave and change forms.

This involved lots of weird quantum phenomena,
plus a branch of math called topology, which

looks at how objects can be arranged and manipulated.

Phase transitions describe how one state of
matter becomes another, thanks to changing

You’ve heard of things melting, boiling,
freezing, and condensing… but there are

If a magnetic substance gets hot enough, for
example, the magnetic orientations of the

atoms get all randomized, and its overall
magnetism is disrupted.

Two of the Nobel prize winners, Michael Kosterlitz
and David Thouless, studied phase transitions

in stuff that’s really cold, and really
thin – just a few atoms thick.

Here, things start getting weird… because
quantum!

Quantum effects can be hard to study, since
they’re tiny and hard to pick out from all

But if you lower the temperature enough, there’s
a lot less energy making the atoms move around,

and quantum effects can be seen throughout
whole materials.

Take quantum vortices, which are basically
whirlpools of angular momentum in materials

like superconductors and superfluids, giving
them strange properties.

Turns out, quantum vortices also involved
in an entirely new topological phase transition

Near absolute zero, the quantum vortices in
ultra-cold, ultra-thin superconductor materials

But with a little bit of heat, the vortices
spread apart over the surface.

This shift is now called the Kosterlitz-Thouless
transition, and it’s turned out to be important

Thouless and the final winner, Duncan Haldane,
are both also using topology to pave the way

for a new kind of material: topological insulators.

In a conductor like copper metal, electrons
flow through the entire material.

And in an insulator, like rubber, electrons
can’t really flow at all.

A topological insulator acts like both at
the same time, which we used to think was

Most of the material is an insulator, but
its surface can carry an electric current.

Nowadays, scientists are working to develop
topological insulators, and some think they

could be as important for future technologies
as semiconductors are today.

So this year’s Nobel Laureates have pioneered
some important research into molecular machines

and topological materials, and it looks like
there’s a lot more on the horizon!

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