
A Boy and His Atom: Smallest Stop-Motion Film [video] - ssijak
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSCX78-8-q0
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avsteele
You can find another movie of actual atoms taken by me at my website.

[https://avsteele.com/index.html#science](https://avsteele.com/index.html#science)
(scroll down a little)

Each dot is fluorescence from a single trapped barium ion.
Excitation/fluorescence is at 493 nm, so the false-color map in the video is
almost realistic.

More details are in the figure caption.

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BostonEnginerd
This is one of my favorite SPM videos.

My company makes an Scanning Probe Microscope (more commonly known as an AFM)
which goes into a Zeiss Scanning Electron Microscope. You can unlock some
really neat applications with the combination - scanning areas which would be
hard to locate, observing the tip interaction with the sample and using the
Focused Ion Beam to remove material from the sample.

With SPM, you can do a variety of measurements - measure the topology, measure
the electrical properties, surface potential, conductivity, etc.

Here's a neat video of the system in action:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrsoS5e39H8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrsoS5e39H8)

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JelteF
The video explaining how this is done is also very interesting:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xA4QWwaweWA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xA4QWwaweWA)

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Bromskloss
The informative part is 2:57–3:23.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xA4QWwaweWA&t=2m57s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xA4QWwaweWA&t=2m57s)

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jv22222
One thing that I don't quite get. If a single atom is the smallest thing
(other than quantum foam etc), then what is it resting on in this movie. IE
what is the background made of?

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tyingq
The background is a copper plate.

 _" Copper plate: The scientists used copper 111 as the surface of the
animation — the same material they used 10 years ago when they built the first
computer that performed digital computation operations. Carbon monoxide (CO):
ok The scientists chose carbon monoxide molecules to move around the plate.
Carbon monoxide has one carbon atom and one oxygen atom, stacked on top of
each other."_

[http://www.research.ibm.com/articles/madewithatoms.shtml#fbi...](http://www.research.ibm.com/articles/madewithatoms.shtml#fbid=87N25qtYtKA)

I assume focus / depth of field is why the surface looks smooth. Or whatever
the equivalent of that is for a scanning/tunnelling microscope.

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thatcherc
One thing I don't understand with that quote: it seems to imply this video was
made only ten years after "first computer that performed digital computation
operations". Is this a typo in the original or are they referring to something
else?

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tyingq
Probably something like logic gates assembled by moving atoms around?

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RunawayGalaxy
Pedantically speaking, most movies are made by filming actual atoms.

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21
In that case, all data storage is already atomic.

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cosban
This is interesting, but it was also posted to Youtube in 2013. Could we get
an updated title with that information?

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sprash
Could you build a super advanced processor with this SPM technology? Has this
been done already by anyone?

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hueving
How many other tech companies fund fundamental research like this? Has it come
down to just IBM?

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sethbannon
What exactly are the fields appearing around each atom?

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6nf
They are part of the atom - the electron cloud around the nucleus.
[https://phys.org/news/2015-10-electron-orbitals-
molecules-d....](https://phys.org/news/2015-10-electron-orbitals-
molecules-d.html)

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LarryMade2
Reminds me of Dancing Demon for the TRS-80

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baron816
What kind of atoms are they?

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XaspR8d
They're molecules of carbon monoxide, according to the making-of clip.

