THE PERFECT GIFT

Can You Hear It? The World’s Smallest Violin is Here

Scientists in the U.K. have turned the joke into reality.

The world’s smallest violin—tinier than the width of a human hair—has been crafted by scientists in the U.K. In what sounds like the perfect birthday gag gift, the platinum-built violin measures just 35 microns high by 13 microns wide—a tiny fraction of a millimeter. By comparison, a strand of human hair is typically 17 to 180 microns across. The team at Loughborough University in England created the miniscule instrument as a wink to the classic sarcastic retort “can you hear the world’s smallest violin playing just for you?,” typically used to mock someone’s overly dramatic reaction, which they reference in their news release. While it might seem like fun, the physicists say building the violin was useful in testing the University’s new nanolithography system—cutting-edge technology that allows researchers to build and study structures at microscale. While they aren’t confident it is, in fact, the world’s smallest, they note that “it is very small.” Sadly, the violin is so thin that it’s almost a two-dimensional object, meaning it won’t play a note. But it will play the joke perfectly.