A Little Bit of Whimsy
December 09, 2009
Speaking of things festive, here’s the world’s smallest snowman. At just 0.01 mm across, he’s slimmer than a human hair. Strictly speaking, he’s also made of tin.
The eyes and smile were milled using a focused ion beam, and the nose, which is under 1 µm wide (or 0.001 mm), is ion beam deposited platinum.
The object was built by Dr David Cox of the National Physical Laboratory’s Quantum Detection Group. The video below should give you some idea of just how small the snowman is.
Faithful in sentiment, if not materials or size.