Scientists have taken the idea of a film short down to new levels and that's Molecular levels!

Furthermore, IBM said it has made the tiniest stop-motion movie ever having a one-minute video of individual carbon monoxide molecules repeatedly rearranged to show a boy dancing, throwing a ball and bouncing on a trampoline. 

Interestingly, each frame measures 45 by 25 nanometres there are 25 million nanometres in an inch but hugely magnified, the movie is suggestive of early video games, particularly when the boy bounces the ball off the side of the frame accompanied by simple music and sound effects.

The movie has been titled A Boy and His Atom.

Videos showing atoms in motion have been seen before but Andreas Heinrich, IBM’s principal scientist for the project, said on Tuesday this is the first time anything so small has been directed to tell a story.

Mr. Heinrich said that this movie is a fun way to share the atomic-scale world, while he also added that the reason they made this was not to convey a scientific message directly, but to engage with students and to prompt them to ask questions.

Jamie Panas of Guinness World Records said Guinness certified the movie as “Smallest Stop-Motion Film.”

Making of the Smallest Stop-Motion Film

IBM used a remotely operated two-ton scanning tunnelling microscope at its lab in San Jose, California, to make the movie earlier this year. The microscope magnifies the surface over 100 million times while it operates at 268 degrees below zero Celsius.

Mr. Heinrich said that the cold “makes life simpler for them while the atoms hold still. They would move around on their own at room temperature.

Moreover, IBM said that the scientists used the microscope to control a tiny, super-sharp needle along a copper surface. At a distance of just 1 nanometre, the needle physically attracted the carbon monoxide molecules and pulled them to a precisely specified location on the surface.

Mr. Heinrich said that the dots that make up the figures in the movie are the oxygen atoms in the molecule. The scientists took 242 still images that make up the movie’s 242 frames. He felt that as data creation and consumption continue to get bigger, data storage needs to get smaller, all the way down to the atomic level.

That's a fantabulous record indeed!

Image source: IBM makes tiniest stop-motion movie ever.

(AW:Samrat Biswas)