“Particle man” dances in movie made of single atoms
IBM released a video this week made of still images of individually arranged atoms, which the Guinness Book of World Records has dubbed the world’s smallest stop motion film.
From the release: “In order to make the movie, the atoms were moved with an IBM-invented scanning tunneling microscope….Remotely operated on a standard computer, IBM researchers used the microscope to control a super-sharp needle along a copper surface to “feel” atoms. Only 1 nanometer away from the surface, which is a billionth of a meter in distance, the needle can physically attract atoms and molecules on the surface and thus pull them to a precisely specified location on the surface. The moving atom makes a unique sound that is critical feedback in determining how many positions it’s actually moved.”
See more about how the nano-movie was made in the accompanying mini-documentary from IBM.
