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Nano SensorsAmbience: FireNanotechnology explores the special properties that materials have at a very small scale. It's led to advances in electronics, biochemistry and virtually every area of science, plus a host of applications including sensors that can help us choose the foods we buy. I'm Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.Spadola: There are even examples of nanotechnology in food packaging. One is there's on the market in New Zealand, it's not in the US yet, they have this little sensor on pear packaging. Dr. Quinn Spadola is education coordinator for Nanotechnology at Georgia Tech, which is part of the National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure.Spadola: And what's nice about nanotechnology is it's very, very small, so it's very lightweight. So nanotechnology is being used to create these very sensitive, lightweight small sensors. These sensors are on this packaging for these pears and they can detect as the pears ripen, the fruit gives off a gas and the sensor changes color. So you know exactly when your pair is the perfect ripeness. And thanks to the fact that it's very lightweight and you don't need a lot of the materials, so it's not very expensive, they can put it into this food packaging and it doesn't make a big difference or a difference at all in the price or in how much it would cost to ship this stuff, but now consumers can know exactly when their pear is the perfect ripeness.So it's on the packaging around the pears. It's not anything that has happened to the pear itself. When you take it out of the packaging, all the nano is on the packaging. But they're enclosed inside of this plastic packaging with the sensors, so it's able to detect this gas as they ripen.A sensor is currently in the works to detect whether packaged meat is safe to eat. Pulse of the Planet is made possible in part by the Center for Earth and Environmental Nanotechnology and the National Science Foundation.