Why Press Fit

Some of you could be wondering why the press fit is important, some if us did when we did these assignments.

The idea of parametric design and pressfit is like and introduction to the world of self assembling self replicating micro/nano robotics,smart materials, smart dust…..

One of my dreams was to make a technology so that you can control small insects like ants, bees or termites, make them do what you want. How long do you think think a few colonies worth of these insects will take to make a home of our design?

Think about a sub mm scale machine that can replicate itself every hour, making exponential growth, this will result in 16.7 million machines in a day, starting with just one. What if you can now program this tiny machines to make something else now. Imagine the possibilities. Do you recognise such a machine? In nature? Life or to be specific, cells of higher order life forms (>virus) are perfect examples of these machines. They can exponentially grow, replicate but are also capable of making or doing other stuff than just replication.

Ever imagined why this is possible?

One of the very important reasons is that the life, as we know it is a big ‘press fit’ construction, made up of simpler building blocks, may be less than 50 in number. About 22 amino acids, A, T, G, C & U and Ribose sugar and de-oxy Ribose sugar and phosphates that makes up DNA, RNA and proteins. Along with that a few sugar molecules like glucose, fructose etc and lipids will account for almost everything in our cells, which in turn are capable of making everything else and more importantly they are capable of self replication and are also capable of typing this post and reading it!

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sibu