John Hart, a Mechanical Engineering Professor at University of Michigan (go blue!) might be making the tiniest art ever.
These mini sculptures are made out of carbon nanotubes, which are spectacular little structures made entirely of carbon, each with a diameter tens of thousands of times smaller than a human hair. Carbon nanotubes are all the rage at the moment because of their unique properties —for instance, they are extremely lightweight but about 100 times stronger than steel, which makes them potentially useful for paper batteries (and theoretically useful in the creation of a space elevator…).
Each of the Obama faces above is composed of about 150 million nanotubes, stacked parallel to each other, for a total width of about .5 millimeters (10 times the diameter of a human hair). The sculptures themselves are so small that they are barely visible to the human eye—it takes an electron microscope to obtain a photograph like the one you see here. I suppose it’s a weird hobby, making art too small to see, but I think I like it.
Check out more nano-art here.
These mini sculptures are made out of carbon nanotubes, which are spectacular little structures made entirely of carbon, each with a diameter tens of thousands of times smaller than a human hair. Carbon nanotubes are all the rage at the moment because of their unique properties —for instance, they are extremely lightweight but about 100 times stronger than steel, which makes them potentially useful for paper batteries (and theoretically useful in the creation of a space elevator…).
Each of the Obama faces above is composed of about 150 million nanotubes, stacked parallel to each other, for a total width of about .5 millimeters (10 times the diameter of a human hair). The sculptures themselves are so small that they are barely visible to the human eye—it takes an electron microscope to obtain a photograph like the one you see here. I suppose it’s a weird hobby, making art too small to see, but I think I like it.
Check out more nano-art here.
2 comments:
Seeing NANOBAMA brings me the tiniest little bit of joy.
i know i like it.
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