The World’s Smallest Snowman

Posted by Harendra on December 11th, 2009

Scientists at the National Physical Laboratory in West London have built the world’s smallest snowman which measures just 0.01 mm across (1/5th the width of a human hair.) but it is not made of snow. It is made up of two tiny tin beads used to calibrate electron microscope lenses which were welded together with platinum.

A sharp and focused ion beam was used to cut and shape the snowman’s eyes and smile and used a tiny blob of platinum for the nose.

Dr.David Cox, a member of the Quantum Detection group at the laboratory and he is accustomed to working with such astonishingly small objects by using his nano-particle manipulation tools. He created the snowman “by hand” using a system for manipulating nanoparticles

Smallest Snow Man