Sri Lankan News
Golden Start to International Year of Chemistry in NZ
Thursday, 10 February 2011
The UN General Assembly declared 2011 the International Year of Chemistry, and New Zealand's launch kicked off with a fashion show - highlighting the amazing Merino Gold, a Kiwi creation of gold atoms and fine merino yarn.
(via Victoria University of Wellington & Massey Unviersity) A collaboration between MacDiarmid Institute chemists at Victoria University and fashion designers at Massey University resulted in a fashion collection based on the unique properties of pure merino wool coloured by bonded clusters of gold atoms.
The luxury wool has attracted interest and requests for samples from top fashion houses in Europe. The designer of the winning collection, Greer Osborne from New Plymouth, will have the opportunity to travel to the UK and visit and work with a number of leading fashion designers. The visits have been organised by the British Society of Interior Design and Wools of New Zealand (UK).
The technique for forming and bonding the gold clusters to wool is just one of many applications of nanotechnology - working with material on tiny scales of one billionth of a meter - and illustrates the technical skills and creativity of New Zealand chemists and physicists working in the field. Nanotechnology is a meeting place of chemistry, physics and biology.
Following the fashion show, Sir Richard Friend, a successor of New Zealand's Ernest Lord Rutherford as director of the famous Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, gave a talk about the "creative tension" between science and technology.
Sir Richard is a keynote speaker at the fifth international conference of the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, opened by the Prime Minister. The Institute is one of eight centres of research excellence selected for special government backing; it encompasses scientists all around New Zealand and is hosted by Victoria University.
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