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Nano Scale Artworks 72

Posted by CmdrTaco from the i-thought-art-professors-graded-on-size dept.
Matthew Sparkes writes "This article is a list of the best nano-scale artworks. It includes a 15 micron wide badger, a ten micron long guitar (which was actually played) and a 120 micron long New Scientist logo. Of course these are the images that got released to the press. In labs around the world people must have used their bleeding-edge technologies to make structures just to impress their friends. I wonder how many scientists' significant others have received nano-Valentines on Feb 14th?"
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Nano Scale Artworks More

Nano Scale Artworks

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  • Badgers? (Score:3, Funny)

    by smitty97 ( 995791 ) on Wednesday March 28, 2007 @08:53AM (#18514653)

    It includes a 15 micron wide badger
    Badgers? Badgers?! We dont need no stinking badgers!

  • I love you this much (Score:5, Funny)

    by QMO ( 836285 ) on Wednesday March 28, 2007 @08:55AM (#18514689) Homepage Journal
    Nano valentines: For when you only love a very tiny amount.

    • What do you mean I didn't get you anything for Valentine's Day!?! It's right here on this microscope slide...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Scutter ( 18425 )
        What do you mean I didn't get you anything for Valentine's Day!?! It's right here on this microscope slide...

        They say it's the thought that counts, but we all know that's not true.
    • Nano valentines: For when you care enough to send the very least.

  • Well I for one... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    openly accept my new microscopic God [newscientist.com].

  • Back in 1985, I signed my chip (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 28, 2007 @08:58AM (#18514727)
    Back in my VLSI class at the Univ. of Saskatchewan in 1985, our chip design team put each of our initials into the chip (I think it was a simple 10-bit adder) and although it may have seemed easy, we had to add them in such a way as to pass the various layout tests that the fab plant forced on the file. So we couldn't just add a Metal layer with "TDz" on it, it had to be drawn in such a way that all the various layout rules such as minimum distance and certain layers not crossing in certain ways had to be followed.

    TDz.

  • One of my favorite... (Score:5, Informative)

    by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) * <`akaimbatman' `at' `gmail.com'> on Wednesday March 28, 2007 @08:59AM (#18514737) Homepage Journal
    ...forms of nanoscale artwork is the art etched into microchips [wikipedia.org]. It's more fun than most nanoscale art, because if you start pulling apart ICs and putting them under a powerful enough microscope, you can spot all kinds of artwork.

    For those who are unfamiliar with it, I highly recommend the Molecular Expressions Silicon Zoo gallery of chip art:

    http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/creatures/ [fsu.edu]
    • We do little skiers on the chips we crank out. Sometimes, we even work in recognizeable (from the right vantage point) mountain silhouettes. Whee!

  • Significant others (Score:4, Funny)

    by UbuntuDupe ( 970646 ) * on Wednesday March 28, 2007 @09:06AM (#18514813) Journal
    I wonder how many scientists' significant others have received nano-Valentines on Feb 14th?"

    Many -- it's an old trick.

    "Honey, for Valentine's, I made you a really beautiful, tiny guitar. The frame is from one piece! Here, take a look. Oh, wait, we need your laboratory-grade nano-scale microscope for this. You don't have one? Ah, crap, then we can't see it! Oh well, tough break, maybe we'll get a chance some other time."

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by MancunianMaskMan ( 701642 )
      I made a mothers-day card back in 1995, a heart-shape and the word "MAMA" focused-ion-beam implanted into some GaAs (for want of a SO at the time). It was about 30um across, but I have long lost the picture. Do I get a prize?

  • om the i-thought-art-professors-graded-on-size dep (Score:3, Funny)

    by jimstapleton ( 999106 ) on Wednesday March 28, 2007 @09:07AM (#18514819) Journal
    No, Taco, that's women and english professors...

    Well art professors /do/ grade on size, but typically it's in the opposite direction, the smaller the detail, the better.
  • I made a genetically modified virus for Valentines day. Unfortunately, none of my Valentines seem to enjoy it when I sneeze on them. I'm just spreading the love :(
  • Wait, wait, you're saying that scientists have significant others??

  • Wikipedia says [wikipedia.org]: Micrometre, one millionth of a metre. The term micron was officially sanctioned as part of the metric system from 1879 to 1967

    Get over it already!

  • Microns are not nanoscale (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 28, 2007 @10:14AM (#18515769)
    Thousands of nanometers is not nanoscale. I work with researchers who like to report measurements in thousands of nanometers instead of microns. It's stupid. Don't do it.

  • A Guitar? (Score:4, Funny)

    by CrazyJim1 ( 809850 ) on Wednesday March 28, 2007 @10:18AM (#18515837) Journal
    So when is someone going to make the world's tiniest violin?

  • Small Instruments? (Score:3, Funny)

    by LordPhantom ( 763327 ) on Wednesday March 28, 2007 @10:19AM (#18515843)
    a ten micron long guitar (which was actually played)

    I was horribly disappointed that they didn't make the "world's smallest violin".
  • Take it from me, women dont like scientific geek gifts: When I was in university I had access to the high pressure systems in the physics and chem labs, so I made her a dimond out of some carbon I...ummm...had lying around...yeah...anyway. She was definaly not impressed. I then, with a different girl used the same labs to make a string of jewels of various styles and make a necklace. Also not impressed. the moral of the story, physics geeks dont get the girl...those with IT skills however...lets just say

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Bugs42 ( 788576 )

      lets just say I've gotten the girl because I could fix her laptop.
      You "fixed" her "laptop"? What fresh hell is this, a new low for geeky euphemisms?
    • You must not be meeting the right girls. I happen to be one myself, and since I'm generally socially conscious, I would much prefer a lab-made diamond than one ill-gotten in Africa.

  • Summary is misleading... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Etherwalk ( 681268 ) on Wednesday March 28, 2007 @10:38AM (#18516137)
    The guitar shown in the link is a 10 micron Fender guitar; the playable guitar referenced by the article is 50 micron Gibson Flying V.

    Now all we need is a 90 micron guitarist. Quick, where do we find a Lillipution [wikipedia.org] orchestra?
    • A Fender? Not likely, it looks more like a B.C. Rich, if anything. Didn't check out the Flying V.

      I was disappointed the article didn't mention this IBM effort [physorg.com]. Another IBM logo, but the whole thing is 3.3 x 8.8 nm. Still not as small as Hitachi's, but smaller than the other IBM logo they cited. They used an atomic force microscope, which is one of the cooler-sounding lab instruments...
    • Now all we need is a 90 micron guitarist.

      David Gil-less?

      OK that was bad, even by my standards.

  • Three orders of magnitude... (Score:3, Informative)

    by AJWM ( 19027 ) on Wednesday March 28, 2007 @10:39AM (#18516141) Homepage
    nano-scale artworks. It includes a 15 micron wide badger, a ten micron long guitar (which was actually played) and a 120 micron long New Scientist logo.

    This features are all multi-micron in size. That isn't nano-scale, that's micro-scale, a three orders of magnitude difference. Just because it's small doesn't make it "nano". (Perhaps "nano" is the new "turbo" or "extreme"? Oh no wait, that's "HD".)

    Come back when the features are nanometer size, like this one [nanomedicine.com], or these [nobelprize.org].

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AJWM ( 19027 )
      Okay, that'll teach me to RTFA. There were two nanoscale images in the article, even if the blurb only mentions the microscale images.

      Sigh.
    • it is acutely nano scale, as the components of the pictures are nanometers in length; like using a pen a few nanometers in radius to draw a picture, E-beam technique talked about in the article can remove single atoms of a structure, when my research group first got our FIB(focused ion beam) we drew a picture of Einstein a few hundred nanometers across, though it was never published.
  • How cool would it be to stick a nano scale musical instrument into someone's ear so they chronically have a song stuck in their head. Hehehehe... Oh the future of nano pranks... Suddenly the future looks pretty bright.
  • My favorite of all time was more of a statement than an art piece. Too bad it's an urban legend...

    /P

  • I now have a reason to buy a decent microscope... Nano p0rn! Whoo hoo!

    • I now have a reason to buy a decent microscope... Nano p0rn! Whoo hoo!
      Nano p0rn? That's old hat - take one naked slashdotter, one webcam...

  • Currency (Score:3, Interesting)

    by phorm ( 591458 ) on Wednesday March 28, 2007 @12:16PM (#18517411) Journal
    I wonder what the cost is to produce these once the initial template is made? I know that many microchips have been found to have microscopic (nanoscopic?) logos and/or designs etched in them. Many countries also include various watermarks etched to microweave in their currency.

    How practical would it be to include an imprint that is only visible to microscope, and have a verification method that depends on checking said imprint (would have to be viewable with somewhat inexpensive microscopes).
  • I wish people wouldn't confuse micro and nano. The article did talk about few nanometer-sized contraptions, but many of them were really much larger---several hundred micrometers (um). The cool 10 um guitar is only a tiny bit below being visible by naked eye: human hair thickness is usually between 50-100 um (.05-.1 mm).

    The difference between 10 nm and 10 micrometers is a factor of 1000 difference in size: it's like confusing a wristwatch and Big Ben clock tower watch. Even more importantly, nanoscale o

  • a ten micron long guitar (which was actually played)


    The playable guitar (a Flying V) is 50 microns, 5 times bigger than the (unplayable) 10 micron 'strat' original.

    Not that 50 microns isn't crazily small...
  • Everyone knows that Intel will be Inside of all future art

  • I did it! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by TheSync ( 5291 ) * on Wednesday March 28, 2007 @01:59PM (#18518863) Journal
    In college, I made a metal1 layer of my initials "+" my girlfriend's initials in an unused area of a 2um process microchip through MOSIS (the letters were around 100um tall). You could see it in a microscope. She wasn't impressed.

    New girlfriend was acquired shortly thereafter.

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