http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/...90825171631.htm

LEGOs Help Researchers Learn What Happens Inside Lab-on-a-Chip Devices

Johns Hopkins engineers are using a popular children's toy to visualize the behavior of particles, cells and molecules in environments too small to see with the naked eye. These researchers are arranging little LEGO pieces shaped like pegs to re-create microscopic activity taking place inside lab-on-a-chip devices at a scale they can more easily observe.

These lab-on-a-chip devices, also known as microfluidic arrays, are commonly used to sort tiny samples by size, shape or composition, but the minuscule forces at work at such a small magnitude are difficult to measure. To solve this small problem, the Johns Hopkins engineers decided to think big.

Led by Joelle Frechette and German Drazer, both assistant professors of chemical and biomolecular engineering in the university's Whiting School of Engineering, the team used beads just a few millimeters in diameter, an aquarium filled with goopy glycerol and the LEGO pieces arranged on a LEGO board to unlock mysteries occurring at the micro- or nanoscale level. Their observations could offer clues on how to improve the design and fabrication of lab-on-a-chip technology. Their study concerning this technique was published in the Aug. 14 issue of Physical Review Letters.

The idea for this project comes from the concept of "dimensional analysis," in which a process is studied at a different size and time scale while keeping the governing principles the same.

"Microfluidic arrays are like miniature chemical plants," Frechette says. "One of the key components of these devices is the ability to separate one type of constituent from another. We investigated a microfluidic separation method that we suspected would remain the same when you scale it up from micrometers or nanometers to something as large as the size of billiard balls."

With this goal in mind, Frechette and Drazer constructed an array using cylindrical LEGO pegs stacked two high and arranged in rows and columns on a LEGO board to create a lattice of obstacles. The board was attached to a Plexiglas sheet to improve its stiffness and pressed up against one wall of a Plexiglas tank filled with glycerol. Stainless steel balls of three different sizes, as well as plastic balls, were manually released from the top of the array; their paths to the bottom were tracked and timed with a camera.

The entire setup, Drazer said, cost a few hundred dollars and could easily be replicated as a science fair experiment.

Graduate students Manuel Balvin and Tara Iracki, and undergraduate Eunkyung Sohn, all from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, performed multiple trials using each type of bead. They progressively rotated the board, increasing the relative angle between gravity and the columns of the array (that is, altering the forcing angle). In doing so, they saw that the large particles did not move through the array in a diffuse or random manner as their small counterparts usually did in a microfluidic array. Instead, their paths were deterministic, meaning that they could be predicted with precision, Drazer said.

The researchers also noticed that the path followed by the balls was periodic once the balls were in motion and coincided with the direction of the lattice. As the forcing angle increased, some of the balls tended to shift over one, two, three or as many as four pegs before continuing their vertical fall.

"Our experiment shows that if you know one single parameter—a measure of the asymmetry in the motion of a particle around a single obstacle—you can predict the path that particles will follow in a microfluidic array at any forcing angle, simply by doing geometry." Drazer said.

The fact that the balls moved in the same direction inside the array for different forcing angles is referred to as phase locking. If the array were to be scaled down to micro- or nanosize, the researchers said they would expect these phenomena to still be present and even increase depending on the factors such as the unavoidable irregularities of particle size or surface roughness.

"There are forces present between a particle and an obstacle when they get really close to each other which are present whether the system is at the micro- or nanoscale or as large as the LEGO board," Frechette said. "In this separation method, the periodic arrangement of the obstacles allows the small effect of these forces to accumulate, and amplify, which we suspect is the mechanism for particle separation."

This principle could be applied to the design of micro- or nanofluidic arrays, she added, so that they could be fabricated to "sort particles that had a different roughness, different charge or different size. They should follow a different path in an array and could be collected separately."

Phase locking is likely to become less important, Drazer cautioned, as the number of particles in solution becomes more concentrated. "Next," he said, "we have to look at how concentrated your suspension can be before this principle is destroyed by particle-particle interactions."

Both Drazer and Frechette are affiliated faculty members of Johns Hopkins Institute for NanoBioTechnology. The research was funded by grants from the National Science Foundation and the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund.

I know that’s boring. I only understand the basics of what it’s talking about. But man, I love Legos.

This was before the First Lego League in the below article came of age, but I used to compete in tech competitions with an early set of the robotics system. (Yes, I’ve always been a geek) Those things are a blast. That was my first introduction into computer programming. And I didn’t learn the term until late in college, but that was my first exposure to mechatronics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechatronics

My little boy is about to inherit my drum full of lego bricks. I wish I had a few of those mac-daddy mindstorms sets.

http://www.hometownlife.com/article/200908...0354/1037/rss14

It's not your father's Lego anymore

When I was growing up the 1960s my parents gave me a set of Lego bricks to play with. My brothers and I spent hours building forts, castles, and imaginary ships. The bricks were basic plastic toys and came is a variety of length and widths. When I had children of my own, I bought them buckets full of Lego to encourage them to be builders and think like engineers. The Lego I bought my boys had a much wider variety of bricks and specialized pieces that enabled them to build much more complicated structures than I was able to build.

The Lego currently available for sale includes a Robotics series that enables people to build and program relatively sophisticated robots. The Lego “Mindstorms” robotics system runs off a 16 bit processor and can be used to build robots that move, pick up objects, and contain light, sound, touch and motion sensors. Colleges and K-12 school districts use this system to teach robotics and basic programming skills. These robots can identify, pick up, and manipulate objects. The capabilities of these robots is incredible and can be seen on numerous YouTube videos. One of the benefits of this platform is that it is simple to tear apart a robot and build a new one while reusing each and every component.
There are some barriers that must be addressed before this platform is widely adopted. The Mindstorms system costs in the neighborhood of $250. This is an expensive “toy” and many parents may hesitate to buy it for their children until they know that their children will want to use it. The cost increases when young robot builders want to add new or different sensors. Lego and other vendors offer sensors that measure acceleration, differentiate between colors, and can ultrasonically determine the distance of an object from the sensor. Adding these sensors to your robot can open many opportunities for improving the performance and capabilities of your robot but also increase your investment.
Many young people will be competing in the First Lego League competition during the 2009-2010 school year. Teams of young people will be presented with a set of problems and challenges that they must be solved by a robot that they construct. As you can imagine, the young people learn about robotics, teamwork and healthy competition at an early age. Last year there was a First Lego League competition at the Rock Financial Expo Center that attracted hundreds of competitors. The engineering was first rate and the young engineers got to meet other young people that shared their interest in robots. I stayed as long as my ears could stand it and was very impressed by the hard work put in by the young people.

The young people who compete in these competitions develop technical and teamwork skills. Many of the employers that we deal with at Walsh College stress the importance of social and presentation skills in the engineers that they hire. The young people competing in these robotics competitions have a head start on their competitors in the job market. If nothing else, they have an entry on their resumes that not every young person can.

What does a robotics challenge for elementary school students say about the direction of education and society? The first lesson is obvious, technology is here to stay and will have a growing impact on our lives. The second lesson is that the world has changed and what used to be exclusively children's toys has become a robotics platform. It is never too early to get started on learning the technologies of tomorrow.

Tinker toys were fun, too. But I don't think they've kept up with leggos.

I've never seen mechanized Tinker Toys.

It took me a while of watching these kids compete to figure out what they're trying to do. It's pretty cool, and though I'm sure each team's solution is different in a long list of ways I do notice that from what I've seen they all take fundamentally the same approach to the problem... Everything I've seen is pretty much a Lego version of a wheeled autonomous Bobcat, but I don't know enough about the kit and the rules to know if that's a fair critizism or not. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHj74pOfxDA Still, I'm impressed. These kids can build and program robots! Little kids! Makes the contest I used to compete in 15+ years ago look like Tinker Toys...

I wonder if the research in the first article can improve my chances at Plinko on The Price is Right.

wow…didn’t realize Legos has come this far, I remember back in the ‘80s when I lived in NYC going to a technical school to enroll in a robotics course, I was always mechanically inclined and enjoyed tinkering with machines, car engines, fixing appliances…etc…I didn’t enroll…wasn’t real sure this was where I wanted to go instead I spent $5,000 on a state-of-the-art Tandy 2000 Computer(circa ’83), it was the first generation graphics computer with GW-Basic on MSDOS 6.0. I started designing all kinds of graphics using fractal geometry(sign, cosign) …butterflies, spiders in webs, scenic graphics with bridges, mountains, a man sailing in a boat…still have the printouts and actual BASIC code.

I sometimes watch the MIT competitions when they are aired…will definitely watch the Lego Competition, when is it taking place.

They should be teaching stuff like this in ALL schools, this country needs to desperately upgrade the educational system, American kids are being left in the dust as other countries advance ahead in science and technology.

on a side note, did anyone see 60 Minutes a few weeks back where physically disabled people could operate computers with their brain/thoughts, it’s exactly what Ray Kurzweil talks about in his book The Age of Spiritual Machines, the integration of man and machines transcending the carbon prison that keeps humans stuck on this planet.