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Nano Scale Artworks

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the i-thought-art-professors-graded-on-size dept.

Matthew Sparkes writes "This article is a list of the best nano-scale artworks. It includes a 15 micron wide badger, a ten micron long guitar (which was actually played) and a 120 micron long New Scientist logo. Of course these are the images that got released to the press. In labs around the world people must have used their bleeding-edge technologies to make structures just to impress their friends. I wonder how many scientists' significant others have received nano-Valentines on Feb 14th?"

5 of 72 comments (clear)

  1. One of my favorite... by AKAImBatman · · Score: 4, Informative

    ...forms of nanoscale artwork is the art etched into microchips. It's more fun than most nanoscale art, because if you start pulling apart ICs and putting them under a powerful enough microscope, you can spot all kinds of artwork.

    For those who are unfamiliar with it, I highly recommend the Molecular Expressions Silicon Zoo gallery of chip art:

    http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/creatures/

    --
    Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
  2. Microns are not nanoscale by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Thousands of nanometers is not nanoscale. I work with researchers who like to report measurements in thousands of nanometers instead of microns. It's stupid. Don't do it.

  3. Summary is misleading... by Etherwalk · · Score: 2, Informative

    The guitar shown in the link is a 10 micron Fender guitar; the playable guitar referenced by the article is 50 micron Gibson Flying V.

    Now all we need is a 90 micron guitarist. Quick, where do we find a Lillipution orchestra?

  4. Three orders of magnitude... by AJWM · · Score: 2, Informative

    nano-scale artworks. It includes a 15 micron wide badger, a ten micron long guitar (which was actually played) and a 120 micron long New Scientist logo.

    This features are all multi-micron in size. That isn't nano-scale, that's micro-scale, a three orders of magnitude difference. Just because it's small doesn't make it "nano". (Perhaps "nano" is the new "turbo" or "extreme"? Oh no wait, that's "HD".)

    Come back when the features are nanometer size, like this one, or these.

    --
    -- Alastair
  5. Micro- nano- what's the difference... by przemekklosowski · · Score: 2, Informative
    I wish people wouldn't confuse micro and nano. The article did talk about few nanometer-sized contraptions, but many of them were really much larger---several hundred micrometers (um). The cool 10 um guitar is only a tiny bit below being visible by naked eye: human hair thickness is usually between 50-100 um (.05-.1 mm).

    The difference between 10 nm and 10 micrometers is a factor of 1000 difference in size: it's like confusing a wristwatch and Big Ben clock tower watch. Even more importantly, nanoscale objects cross over into a radically different behavior, governed by quantum phenomena and other strange interactions--they can no longer be described as rigid objects subject to Newtonian mechanics.

    Oh, well, I guess this is the New Scientist's answer to sensational journalism in popular press. O tempora, o mores