David Johnson, a chemistry professor and nanotechnology expert with the Center for Sustainable Materials Chemistry, displays a mobile communications device that has more information stored on it than some computers on college campuses in the 1980s. With Johnson is Andy Bedingfield, the centers director of outreach and education. BILL RAUTENSTRAUCH - The Observer

Professor visits region in effort to help Ore. companies create better products for digital marketplace

Struggling to explain the science of nanotechnology for a completely science-ignorant newspaper reporter last week, David Johnson held up a mobile communications device that fit neatly in the palm of his hand.

Theres more information stored on this than there was in the huge computers you found on college campuses in the 1980s, Johnson said. Nanotechnology is all about doing more with less.

Then he gave another example.

Think about what TVs were like 30 or 40 years ago. It used to take three people just to lift one, he said.

Johnson, a lead chemistry professor at the Corvallis-based Center for Sustainable Materials Chemistry, spent last week on the road, staging a series of Science Pubs in Eastern Oregon communities including La Grande.

He was spreading the word about the centers research and its efforts to help Oregon companies especially start-up companies make better products for todays digital marketplace.

Electronic circuits are built on a nano-scale, so those products are smaller and lighter than anything people might have imagined decades ago. Thats good for businesses, and good for consumers.

But according to Johnson, its only one part of nanotechnologys benefit.

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Nanotechnology - 'All about doing more with less'