nanoscale

Whoever thinks science isn't fun must have never heard of Legos. The colorful construction toy has been used before as a cellular teaching tool. But these days, even researchers working in the nanoscale world get to play around a little.

The National Synchrotron Light Source was commissioned in 1982, and it remains one of the world's leading experimental light sources. But with so much of today's science happening on the nano-scale, the '80s technology doesn't quite have the resolution to keep up. The $912 million NSLS-II, which is slated to go live in 2015 -- if funding comes through -- will have the most concentrated, brightest radiation beam in the world: 10,000 times brighter than its predecessor -- not to mention 10 billion times brighter than the sun.