IBM Makes a Movie Out of Atoms 102
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.
But... (Score:4, Insightful)
Isn't every movie made out of atoms?
Re:Wait... it's not porn (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What a waste of time (Score:5, Insightful)
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.