Even though it sounds more like something from a cartoon or a superhero movie, the Vortex Fluidic Device invented by Professor Colin Raston from Flinders University in South Australia can undo hard-boiled eggs. Winner of the 2015 Ig Nobel Prize in Chemistry, he now claims that his machine may also have important medical and electronics applications as it can slice carbon nanotubes to uniform length with extreme precision.

Carbon nanotubes are 200 times stronger than steel yet five times more flexible, and conduct electricity five times more efficiently than copper wires. Unfortunately, up to now it has proven impossible to consistently create nanotubes with uniform lengths and properties, making their use in real-life applications difficult. One of these applications is highly targeted drug delivery in cancer therapy.

Nanotubes tend to form like sticky spaghetti with strands of different lengths. Similar to a spaghetti extruder the Vortex Fluidic Device is capable of untanglin...