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A Boy and His Atom

Scientists Create World’s Smallest Film

By moving single atoms.

cheats/2013/05/01/scientists-create-world-s-smallest-film/130501-ibm-smallest-movie-cheat_ifcngi

IBM

Scientists at IBM have given new meaning to the term short film. Researchers arranged atoms on a copper surface to create a stop-motion film of a boy bouncing a ball, where the ball is a single atom. It’s so small, that 1,000 frames from the film side-by-side would be as wide as a strand of human hair. The researchers arranged each frame by passing a metal needle close enough to the copper surface to create a quantum “tunneling current” with the atoms they wanted to move. The film was just a fun project, but it highlights IBM’s recent efforts to manipulate atoms in order to create new forms of data storage.

Read it at BBC

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