The World's Smallest Snowman

clipped from www.telegraph.co.uk Scientists create the world's smallest 'snowman' The snowman is made of two tiny tin beads, normally used to calibrate electron microscope lenses, which were welded together with platinum clipped from www.npl.co.uk Christmas 2009 clipped from resource.npl.co.uk The snowman is 10 µm across, 1/5th the width of a human hair. The snowman was made from two tin beads used to calibrate electron microscope astigmatism. The eyes and smile were milled using a focused ion beam, and the nose, which is under 1 µm wide (or 0.001 mm), is ion beam deposited platinum. The techniques used to create the Nano scale snowman are employed by NPL: To make and fine tune Atomic Force Microscope cantilevers for measuring surface topography. To manufacture nano scale SQUIDs (Superconducting Quantum Interference Devices) for a wide range of future metrological applications including spintronics, single particle detection, NEMS and quantum information processing. To measure magnetic properties of very small magnetic systems using quantum hall probes clipped from www.youtube.com

Sources:

1. Scientists create the world's smallest 'snowman' - Telegraph
2. Christmas 2009 : Educate + Explore : National Physical Laboratory
3. YouTube - The World's Smallest Snowman

Related:

1. Gallery - The world's smallest snowman - Image 1 - New Scientist
2. Scientists Create World's Smallest Snowman (w/ Video)
3. Physicists assemble world's smallest snowman • The Register
4. Have yourself a microscopic Christmas: The world's smallest snowman at just 0.01mm wide | Mail Online
5. World's Smallest 'Snowman' PHOTO: Lab Makes Snowman Smaller Than A Human Hair (VIDEO)
6. Great Moments in Science: the World's Tiniest Snowman | Popular Science