Now what in the world is that post title supposed to mean?
Apparently some records were broken back in April concerning the tiniest book in existence: Teeny Ted from Turnip Town was created by a group of Canadian researchers using a focused gallium-ion beam to carve out eetsy-beetsy letters on 30 crystalline silicon microtablets, making up the story of Teeny Ted who goes on to win a turnip contest at the annual county fair.
But you won’t be curling up by the fireplace to read this harrowing tale, oh no. Instead, you’ll be powering up your handy-dandy electron microscope, the only thing powerful enough to bring the infinitesimal pages into focus. You do have one of these lying around the house, right?
For a sense of scale:
The book is 7 nanometers x 10 nanometers in size.
The head of a pin is 2 millimeters across. If there are any angels dancing on it, this must be their favorite book.
Is it art? Is it science? Is it the cutest, teensiest, weensiest thing you’ve ever seen? I’m not sure about any of those, but it is small.
I see that smile.
That’s pretty cool, but I think you’ve got an error in the dimensions quoted. The image has a scale that shows the size of 2 microns, which is 1000 times bigger than 2 nanometres.
You are correct. The correct size of the book is .07 millimetres-by-.1 millimetre, which is a bit bigger than the nanometer measure, but still quite a bit smaller than the 2 millimetre pin head. Thanks for pointing out the discrepancy, Goblin.
That makes the book 70×100 microns in size. 🙂