FYI: http://phys.org/news/2012-04-carbon-nanotubes-weird-world-remote.html
"This is a new phenomenon we're observing, exclusively at the nanoscale, and it is completely contrary to our intuition and knowledge of Joule heating at larger scales-for example, in things like your toaster," says first author Kamal Baloch, who conducted the research while a graduate student at the University of Maryland. "The nanotube's electrons are bouncing off of something, but not its atoms. Somehow, the atoms of the neighboring materials-the silicon nitride substrate-are vibrating and getting hot instead." "The effect is a little bit weird," admits John Cumings, an assistant professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering who oversaw the research project. He and Baloch have dubbed the phenomenon "remote Joule heating." An Unreal Discovery For the UMD researchers, the experience of the discovery was like what you or I might have felt, if, on a seemingly ordinary morning, we began to make breakfast, only to find certain things happening that seem to violate normal reality. The toast is burned, but the toaster is cold. The switch on the stove is set to "HI" and the teapot is whistling, but the burner isn't hot. Of course, Baloch, Cumings and their colleagus weren't making breakfast in a kitchen, but running experiments in an electron microscopy facility at the A. James Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland. They ran their experiments over and over, and the result was always the same: when they passed an electrical current through a carbon nanotube, the substrate below it grew hot enough to melt metal nanoparticles on its surface, but the nanotube itself seemed to stay cool, and so did the metal contacts attached to it.
