Mork from Ork was the first to popularize it with his trademark greeting "Nanu nanu." For, as is well known to all Orkians, Nanu is the plural of "nano" and nano is the topic for today.
Used to be micro was all the rage. What's the smallest of the small? Something that's just microscopic. But now micro is the new macro. And taking its place as the new eensy weensy is nano. A nanometer is a meter (roughly 3 feet) divided by 1000, then one of those pieces divided by 1000 and then one of THOSE pieces divided by a thousand. That's small. So that gets you in the right frame of mind for today's pic. A "snowman." Here he is:
He's got quotes because he might look like a snowman but he's made of metal. Built at the National Physical Labs in London, he was assembled using the equipment built to push nanoparticles around. His eyes and mouth were cut with an ion beam and his nose is a teensy dab of platinum.
So, how large is he? About 10,000 nanometers wide. A sizeable guy, in the nanoworld.
To give you a better idea of how big he REALLY is, here's a picture of an actual snowflake, the kind you'd use to make a real snowman. If you look carefully at the lower left, you'll see a tiny dot flashing on and off. That's Frosty, drawn to scale. You already know how small snowflakes are so this should give you some sense of how big we're talking.
Pretty amazing, eh? Oh, and if you'd like to see more nifty pictures of snowflakes, just hop on over to Snowflakes.com.
They've got a huge gallery of snowflake pics, along with all the snow science you can handle.
- And that's today's word from the bird
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