Thursday, May 2, 2013

'Animated Atoms' Star In World's Smallest Movie



Scientists have made the world's smallest ever stop-motion movie by manipulating individual atoms.
The one-minute video from the IBM team shows carbon monoxide molecules repeatedly rearranged to show a boy dancing, throwing a ball and bouncing on a trampoline.

Each of the 242 frames of A Boy and His Atom measures just 45 by 25 nanometers.
There are 25 million nanometers in an inch.
The movie owes more to early video games in its appearance - particularly when the boy bounces the ball off the side of the frame, accompanied by simple music and sound effects.
"This movie is a fun way to share the atomic-scale world," said Andreas Heinrich, IBM's principal scientist for the project.
"The reason we made this was not to convey a scientific message directly, but to engage with students, to prompt them to ask questions."

The technique is similar to what IBM is doing to make data storage smaller.
The scientists used a two-ton scanning tunnelling microscope at its lab in San Jose, California, to control a tiny, super-sharp needle along a copper surface.
At a distance of just 1 nanometer, the needle physically attracted the carbon monoxide molecules and pulled them to a precisely specified location on the surface.
The microscope magnifies the surface over 100 million times. It operates at 450 degrees below zero Fahrenheit (268 degrees below zero Celsius).
The cold "makes life simpler for us," Mr Heinrich said. "The atoms hold still. They would move around on their own at room temperature."
The movie has been certified as the Smallest Stop-Motion Film by Guinness World Records.

Watch the movie by yourself that is going to be a big benchmark in the history of the animation:


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