Micro Tetris

Jeroen writes "Students from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam used a so-called 'optical trap' to construct a version of Tetris that measures 25 x 20 micrometers. Blocks are constructed from tiny glass beads and all the action takes place in a waterdrop under a microscope. Considering the equipment needed, this must not only be the smallest, but also the most expensive Tetris clone around. A short description and a movie can be found here."

Comments

another victory for Science?

[tps12]

Well, this is cool, I'll give you that. Who would have thought that a video game could be built inside a water droplet, small enough to require an electron microscope just to play! Clearly, there is some interesting research happening over in Holland.

But I'm a little concerned about the "expensive" part. For those who aren't familiar with the Dutch language, I can tell you that "vrije" (as in "Amsterdam Vrije Universiteit") means "free." That is, it's a university without tuition, funded by socialist tax policies (this is very common in Europe).

My concern, then, is that taxpayer money (albeit that of Dutchmen) is being squandled on playing video games through binoculars. You might want to ignore this, thinking that it couldn't possible affect any of us, here in the USA. But remember that none of those countries have any kind of military power or weapons, so they have to rely on us to protect them. While we spend billions a year developing weapons that protect their easy lives of cheese and pornography, they waste their euros playing with the world's tiniest joystick. It's disgraceful to Science, and we should not tolerate it.