>> The experiment that we're flying is really building
on a set of experiments that was done maybe a decade ago
on the crystallization of colloidal atoms.
And this is a situation where one looks at a colloid
as a model atom, because it's relatively large,
relatively slow,
and is something we can visualize the kinetics
and the structure of that we can't do for atoms.
What we're doing now is, based on things that we've done here
at the Colorado School of Mines over the last decade,
where we've used applied fields --
optical fields, electrical fields, even magnetic fields --
we're trying to extend these to the fabrication
of colloidal molecules.
So, from atoms to molecules.
And these are very complicated, if you will,
structures that better model polymers, proteins, amino acids,
things of that nature.
And our hope is that we can study the kinetics
and structure evolution in those systems once again,
as was done on the space station before.
At earth gravity, sedimentation and convection and these sorts
of forces influence the structure formation in ways
which don't allow us to form crystals.
And this is really what we're after.
You can try to density match these systems, so,
use a fluid as the same density as the colloid,
but that won't work for systems like --
systems that are colloidal molecules, which are formed
of colloidal atoms that are of different density.
And so, since we've gone to much more complicated systems
where we have this colloid of this density and this colloid
of this density, we can't simply density match those systems.
And so, we need to do these in space,
or in micro-gravity environments,
in order to make them realizable.
To get the experiment manifested, we responded
to an NRA from NASA and basically got funding
for a long enough period of time to both do the fabrication --
get the experiment designed --
and then eventually to fly to space.
The application process was straightforward.
I think it was well-reviewed.
And in the end, we're getting great assistance in terms
of how we are going to make these experiments actually
function in space.
Well, one of the unique advantages
of the experiments we propose is the use of electric fields.
And the e-field experiment is going to allow us
to directly manipulate and effectively control nature
in a way that's going to allow us to tune the crystallization
and control the kinetics of the processes we want to study.
When we run the experiment,
we expect to see both what we expect --
which are some of the crystallization
and kinetics associated with simple crystallization --
but we also expect to see interesting features
that are going to arise due to the complex nature
of the molecules we're assembling.
So, once again, these are polymeric,
long-chain linear structures.
These are structures which are chiral, and we expect
to see very unique features that we're only going
to be able to observe in space.
Personally, what's most exciting to me is that, over the course
of the last 10 years or so, we've developed techniques
which are quite unique and these have to do
with electrical manipulation, optical manipulation,
and even magnetic manipulation of particles
for other applications.
And this is primarily in biomedical applications.
But we are now going to be applying them
in very fundamental ways, at these fundamental studies
of crystallization and crystallization kinetics,
in a way that we have not been able to do before,
because of the constraints of gravity.