Stop-motion Atomation!

Hi everyone,

Today I wanted to blog about something that isn't especially new in the world of geeks but something that a lot of you may not yet have seen.

I came across an piece of work that claimed to be "The worlds smallest movie" and was intrigued. After some investigation I found the animation, which was called "A boy and his atom" created by IBM. This is basically a short movie created by moving and manipulating individual atoms on a copper plate, using a scanning tunnelling microscope.

IBM's scanning tunnelling microscope - image courtesy of Google images

The concept sounds crazy but is surprisingly quite effective, as well as visually pleasing. The technology involved in creating the animation is technically beyond my comprehension but sounds more like science fiction than science fact. That being said, this is an amazing achievement and really is a great bridge between creativity and technology.

The copper plate which is the background to the animation - courtesy of Google images

I have noticed something cool on the image below of the scanning tunnelling microscope , check it out!

The scanning tunnelling microscope - courtesy of Google images

A couple of quick facts about atoms: 

Atoms are so small that there are more atoms in a single grain of sand than there are grains of sand on an entire beach!

You could fit over 2 billion atoms in the full stop at the end of this sentence.

The size of an atom - courtesy of Google images

Please see the award winning animation below:

Click here for A boy and his Atom

I hope you enjoyed the animation, there is plenty of information on how they created it on the link above.

Happy reading
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