A Boy and His Atom
⚛ How do you make the world’s smallest movie? By moving atoms, one at a time. Certified by the Guinness Book of World Records, this stop motion animation made by IBM nanophysicists only lasts 60 seconds and shows a tiny atomic “boy” jumping on an atomic trampoline and playing with his ball atom, magnified 100 million times. It took 242 frames, each made by a scanning tunneling microscope that weighs 2 tons and operates at -268 degrees Celsius (or 450.5 degrees below zero on the Fahrenheit scale). A needle comes within 1 nanometer of each atom (actually diatomic carbon monoxide), grabs and drags it across the surface of a tiny chip to a new location..you can hear the dragging sound in the “behind the scenes” movie.
⚛ Why was this movie made? According to Moore’s Law, chip performance doubles every 18 months, as the individual transistors become smaller. Currently, it takes about a million atoms to store individual bits of data, but IBM scientists see that number shrinking to 12. At this size, you could fit every movie made on your iPhone. Moving individual atoms precisely becomes important at these tiny dimensions. Hey, scientists like to have fun too! And, as Andreas Heinrich says, if a thousand kids watching A Boy and His Atom decide to go into science instead of law, that’s a win for #STEM . Sorry, lawyers, you had Law and Order 🙂
⚛ Watch: Moving Atoms: Making The World’s Smallest Movie
#ScienceEveryday
madame scientist's not-so-mad musings 
Hello Mam Rajini Rao
As was occasionally said by a former colleague wishing to seem “hip”, “Way kewl!“
N.B. Gender ascription here, however, seems biased.
Very cool, indeed! The stick figure looks androgynous 🙂
I should add that IBM scientists Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer received the 1986 Nobel in Physics for their design of the scanning tunneling microscope. Here’s a short clip of the history: IBM Atomic Shorts: History of the scanning tunneling microscope
wow a 2 ton microscope! using something so large to see something so small
The resolution is 0.1 nm lateral resolution and 0.01 nm depth! I guess the large size is to stabilize the probe and keep it free from vibration, although according to Wiki hobbyists have built their own!
Thex Dar , you didn’t miss it by long….it was released yesterday 🙂
Nice
I like 🙂
🙂 only you Rajini Rao , thanks.
Yes, it was fun, wasn’t it Thex Dar ? (BTW, the link is in the post too). It was funny when that IBM scientist made the scraping sounds of the probe 🙂
Jose M. G. Guerreiro , may be there will be a sequel? 🙂
i think this should be promoted to schools. great film very interesting
cool
So cool!
I hope so Rajini Rao 🙂
Atom Boy has been gif-fed! Check out how super cute he is on Panah Rad ‘s post, guaranteed to make you smile 🙂
http://goo.gl/Ha8Hs
Rajini Rao l am trying to get people to visit this post with that. haha 😀
Rajini Rao this version is actually longer: http://i.imgur.com/tI6QMou.gif
Ooh, that longer gif is so much fun!
As you can tell, I have a weakness for science/tech gifs 😉 If you find interesting ones, tag me and I’ll dig into the science aspect of it to make a more detailed post..like the chameleon’s tongue 🙂
Rajini Rao absolutely 😀 I will
My friend had a question that I don’t know how to answer: If atoms make up everything, how did they separate them out to be filmed…or in other words, what’s in the empty space around the “ball” or the “boy”?
Tonya Wershow , molecules and atoms do exist free in nature. In this specific case, they moved pairs of atoms that were in the form of a molecule. On the smooth surface of the chip, they deposited very few molecules of carbon monoxide (each made up of one carbon atom and one oxygen atom). The empty space between them was vacuum (in the chamber of the microscope).
Oxygen gas, for example is two atoms of oxygen paired together. Some elements can be found as single atoms.
I misread that as atomic poem, Peter Lindelauf . I was so looking forward to your lyrical contribution 🙂
Rajini Rao Super thanks for the answer!
Mind blowing awesome… how amazing that we have developed technology to actually see (let alone manipulate) atoms!!!
WOW!!!!!!
My beak is boggled ……
Martin Sacha I remember that image! Thanks for the link. BTW, I wanted to say that we do see individual radioactive decay in real time using ionization chambers, photographic plates, cloud or bubble chambers, etc. It’s possible the microscope probe would pick up ejection of an alpha particle, since it is quite large. But not beta or gamma rays.
I still do not understand what does it mean when we say “seeing an atom”. In the movie atom look likes a solid sphere of metal. But really atom is made of nucleus and surrounded by electrons with lots of space between them. Where are the electrons? May be I should watch the other related videos.
Hi
All those scifi stories about putting all of human knowledge into a tiny stone cube or similar small device are coming true. That’s awesome.
Reminded me of the first computer game (was it Kong?).
Jagu Barot Perhaps you mean Pong? I remember having that as a kid. I thought it was the most amazing thing at the time.
I’m eagerly waiting for IBM to make the world’s smallest violin so that people stop doing the thing with their thumb and forefinger.