14 May 2013

Atoms and eyes

It's been a little while since I've done a technology post, so here are two cool snippets:

1) Atomic level movie
IBM have created the smallest movie ever by manipulating the atoms on a copper surface.
I know, crazy!
They've called it A Boy and his Atom, and it's essentially stop motion on a teeny tiny scale. "It would take about 1,000 of the frames of the film laid side by side to span a single human hair."
Andreas Heinrich says: "The atoms hold still in their new positions because they form chemical bonds to the copper atoms in hte surface underneath, and that lets us take an image of the whole frame of the film. Between frames we carefully move around the atoms to their new positions, and take another image."       To see click image.

2) Scientists have made a camera that works on the same principle as an insect eye.

This digital camera utilises the ideas behind an insects compound eye. Compared to normal cameras it has a great depth of field and is wide-angle without the usual distortion.
"The development team, led from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, US, believes its new imaging system could eventually find uses in surveillance and for endoscopic investigations of the human body."

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