Weighing An Attogram

Posted by timothy on Wednesday February 25, 2004 @05:06AM from the more-than-a-soul dept.

Roland Piquepaille writes "Researchers at Cornell University have reached a new level of precision by measuring objects with a mass of less than an attogram (10^-18 gram). They used a silicon cantilever oscillator to measure small dots of gold. But their real goal is to detect and identify viruses. The team also wants to reduce the size of the cantilever, extending the sensitivity well into the zeptogram (10^-21 gram) range. This summary contains more details and an image of a small gold dot resting on the silicon cantilever they used to achieve this breakthrough."

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Tests will be difficult by Spamalamadingdong · 2004-02-25 06:04 · Score: 5, Insightful

At that scale, influences like Van der Waals forces become far more powerful than gravity. Reading the pull of gravity with all the EM-related forces at work seems like a very, very difficult job.

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Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
Re:How many... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-02-25 10:02 · Score: 2, Insightful

that's cool. I'm guessing it should be rounded to an integer.

Actually... with his calculations it should be rounded to 3060 because there are only three significant figures in 197g/mol

Obviously it gets the point across either way though.