Guinness credits IBM for making smallest film
May 2, 2013, Thursday
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Print Edition
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Scientists have taken the idea of a film short down to new levels. Molecular levels.
IBM says it has made the tiniest stop-motion movie ever - a one-minute video of individual carbon monoxide molecules repeatedly rearranged to show a boy dancing, throwing a ball and bouncing on a trampoline.
Each frame measures 45 by 25 nanometers - there are 25 million nanometers in an inch - but hugely magnified, the movie is reminiscent of early video games, particularly when the boy bounces the ball off the side of the frame accompanied by simple music and sound effects. The movie is titled "A Boy and His Atom."
Videos showing atoms in motion have been seen before but Andreas Heinrich, IBM's principal scientist for the project, said on Tuesday this is the first time anything so small has been maneuvered to tell a story.
Jamie Panas of Guinness World Records said Guinness certified the movie as "Smallest Stop-Motion Film."
IBM used a remotely operated two-ton scanning tunneling microscope at its lab in San Jose, California, to make the movie earlier this year. The microscope magnifies the surface over 100 million times. It operates at 268 degrees below zero Celsius.
The cold "makes life simpler for us," Heinrich said. "The atoms hold still. They would move around on their own at room temperature."
Scientists used the microscope to control a tiny, super-sharp needle along a copper surface, IBM said.
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.
IBM says it has made the tiniest stop-motion movie ever - a one-minute video of individual carbon monoxide molecules repeatedly rearranged to show a boy dancing, throwing a ball and bouncing on a trampoline.
Each frame measures 45 by 25 nanometers - there are 25 million nanometers in an inch - but hugely magnified, the movie is reminiscent of early video games, particularly when the boy bounces the ball off the side of the frame accompanied by simple music and sound effects. The movie is titled "A Boy and His Atom."
Videos showing atoms in motion have been seen before but Andreas Heinrich, IBM's principal scientist for the project, said on Tuesday this is the first time anything so small has been maneuvered to tell a story.
Jamie Panas of Guinness World Records said Guinness certified the movie as "Smallest Stop-Motion Film."
IBM used a remotely operated two-ton scanning tunneling microscope at its lab in San Jose, California, to make the movie earlier this year. The microscope magnifies the surface over 100 million times. It operates at 268 degrees below zero Celsius.
The cold "makes life simpler for us," Heinrich said. "The atoms hold still. They would move around on their own at room temperature."
Scientists used the microscope to control a tiny, super-sharp needle along a copper surface, IBM said.
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.
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