IBM Makes a Movie Out of Atoms

harrymcc writes "IBM's Almaden Research Center has a scanning tunneling microscope, a device invented by the company. It uses it to move individual atoms around — mostly for storage research. But it's created a 242-frame cartoon, A Boy and His Atom, using individual atoms as pixels. Guinness has certified it as the world's smallest movie." 242 frames, and ten 18-hour days of work by multiple people using a very tiny copper needle attached to an expensive machine to move the atoms around.

Comments

But...

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't every movie made out of atoms?

Re:Wait... it's not porn

[Angeret]

A waste to you perhaps, but not to the people who do this hoping to show what can be done with the current technology - and hoping to inspire viewers to push boundaries and create things themselves. Maybe even pushing the technology onto better things - like creating medical nano-machines capable of removing tumours, or shrinking memory chip dies to allow you to cram more memory into your phone, etc.

What would get someone's attention faster - a stuffy presentation with ideas presented from a list, or something like this which could make you think for yourself? Instead of boilerplating a whine, why not tell us WHY it's a waste of time, huh?

Re:Sounds like an Unknown Lamer story to me.

[SternisheFan]

IBM moved the molecules using two of its own scanning tunnelling microscopes. It's a huge machine that weighs two tonnes, operates at minus 268 degrees Celsius and magnifies atoms -- placed on a copper surface -- by 100 million times. The machine moved around 5,000 carbon monoxide molecules to create the movie. Each time the molecules were arranged in the right way, the IBM team rendered a still image to create each of the 242 frames. In those frames, you can only see one atom or pixel because you look at it from above. It took roughly 10 days of 18-hour shifts to get each frame right.

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-05/1/ibm-movie-atoms

Re:What a waste of time

[jellomizer]

Welcome to science. You are experimenting on a new method of doing something, you got some success, however you need more testing, you might as well have some fun while doing it. Drawing a series of pictures are just about as productive as drawing grids or some other pattern. Besides that after effect is a cute little movie to explain the technology they are doing.

We need more support for these type of things, and less of the bean counter mentality who assumes just because the research isn't obviously monetizable that it is useless.