Filtered by: Scitech
SciTech

IBM makes world's smallest movie, starring real atoms


Here's a really small film that can make huge waves in the field of science: a stop-motion film starring atoms manipulated by a scanning tunneling microscope.
 
Researchers at IBM who created the film aptly titled it "A Boy and His Atom," and had Guinness World Records verify it as the world's smallest movie.
 
"The animated film features a small boy having a good old time as he bounces around, playing catch, and dancing. The twist? The film was shot at the atomic level and features 130 atoms that were painstakingly placed, atom by atom, as the researchers shot 250 individual frames," tech site CNET said.
 
It added the images were created at a temperature of -268 degrees Celsius and were magnified 100 million times.
 
A separate report on The Verge said the film has 242 frames showing the " charming story of a boy dancing and playing with an atom."
 
The Verge also pointed to a short video explaining the technology IBM used to create the film:
 
"Though the technology that the team discusses isn't new, they were able to use it in a new way: the black-and-white images and playful music form a strong artistic style that's reminiscent of early film, but at an entirely different scale," The Verge said.
 
CNET said the IBM researchers led by Andreas Heinrich used IBM's scanning tunneling microscope, which won researchers Heinrich Rohrer and Gerd Binnig a Nobel Prize in physics in 1986, to manipulate the atoms.
 
The microscope moved around the atoms with an extremely sharp needle placed just a nanometer above a copper surface.
 
But Heinrich told CNET the main purpose behind the film is quite simple - boost interest in science and technology.
 
"If we make a movie, we can approach a much wider audience. Our interest is in getting people interested in science....We just need to find a way to talk to people about why we do stuff, and what we do," he said.
 
'Star Trek' fun
 
Heinrich said four researchers spent nine 18-hour days moving the 130 atoms around, just to create the images for the film.
 
After getting 250 images, they turned their work over to an animator who made the final product.
 
The researchers even threw in a tribute of sorts to "Star Trek," creating a series of atomic-level "Star Trek" shots.
 
The shots will be incorporated into the iOS and Android versions of the "Star Trek Into Darkness" app that will come with the forthcoming J.J. Abrams film.
 
Tech site Mashable said the team created "nanoscale images of the Star Trek logo, Starship Enterprise and Vulcan salute." — TJD, GMA News