By Harold Maass
Hollywood loves to go large with movies . IBM scientist went small — very little . The company ’s investigator produced a short , halt - motion flick to showcase their efforts to design the next generation of datum storage , and they did it by manipulating item-by-item atoms to create images of a son play with a ball and bouncing on a trampoline . The time , calledA Boy and His Atom , has been certified by Guinness World Records as the " Smallest Stop - Motion Film " ever .
The scientist used a tiny needle on the top of a two - ton scanning tunneling microscope , pull wires remotely by estimator , tomove atomic number 6 monoxide moleculesaround on a pig dental plate chill to 450 degrees below zero Fahrenheit . The frigid temperature " makes life simpler for us , " says Andreas Heinrich , IBM ’s principal scientist for the project . " The atoms hold still . They would move around on their own at room temperature . " Each frame necessitate an area measuring 45 by 25 nanometers ( there are 25 million nanometers per inch ) , but the microscope hyperbolize the scene over 100 million time .
" This movie is a fun style to apportion the atomic - scale world,“Heinrich says . " The cause we made this was not to convey a scientific message directly , but to engage with students , to prompt them to demand questions . " But that ’s just part of the reasoning . The technique used to make the moving-picture show are like to those IBM is shape on to make datum storage smaller as the world ’s digital archives expand . " As data founding and uptake continue to get adult , " Heinrich state , " data storage needs to get small , all the way down to the atomic grade . "
That sounds logical for computing , but how does this clip stand up as a film ? The result is " the worst animise picture show I ’ve ever seen,“jokes Richi Jennings atComputerworld . " Terrible yield values , absurd patch , and awful soundtrack . " It ’s mercifully short , but — sorry , IBM — " two thumbs down . " But perhaps reader should cut the " IBM egghead " behind this tiny film some slack water , says Mark Hearn atEngadget . They ’re just using " a playful twist on microcomputing " to show off the possibility of guess small , and in that , they succeeded . " Now that the atom ’s gone Hollywood , what ’s next , a molecular entourage ? "
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