Curious Droid presents five smallest things - man-made objects in the world. The sculptures created
by Jonty Hurwitz and his team like this piece called "The gentle giant" have now
reached such a microscopic scale that they even had to create whole new method
of filming just to show them because we are now so small that you can't see the fine
details in normal visible light you have to remember that this elephant sculpture
is just one tenth of a millimeter high and yet you can still see the fine details
of the wrinkles on the skin. This and the other nano sculptures including the one
called "Trust", the world's smallest sculpture of woman which has shown
standing on a human hair are made using a nano 3d printer technique called
multiphoton lithography. This is where they used tiny layers of a
light-sensitive liquid polymer which are laid down one layer time and then
hardened with a focused laser. the smaller details on these works are
approximately in the 300 nanometer scale similar to the
wavelength of visible light and are therefore near impossible by the laws of
physics to see in the visible light spectrum the only way to observe these
works fully is through using a non optical method of magnification like a
scanning electron microscope. One of the problems with sculptures which are so
small
is not only that you can't see them but they can be destroyed or lost very
easily and in fact the sculpture of Cupid and Psyche shown here which was
shown on the head of an ant was accidentally destroyed by single touch
just a week before their publication on the internet. Now if you fought the
previous sculptures were pretty amazing then the next ones on the list will blow
your mind Willard Wigan creates the small handmade sculptures in the world
world. Figures so small that they can stand in the eye of a needle in fact the
very smallest he has made is of a motorcycle inside a hollowed-out shaft of Willards
own beard stubble and don't forget these are made by hand,
not by computer or robot or 3d printer but all by hand these microscopic works of
art sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars and collectors include the likes
of Prince Charles, Elton John, Simon Cowell and Mike Tyson Willards work
has been described as phenomenal and the eighth wonder of the world and in July
2007 he was awarded an MBE by the Queen. In order to make these amazing
sculptures will artists had to make his own micro tools using things like
sharpened microscopic slivers of tungsten or by attaching shard of
diamonds to a pin to carve the figures and then using the hair from a housefly as a
paintbrush. To make these tiny sculptures Willard uses a 600x
magnification microscope and enters an almost meditative state slowing his
heartbeat and then doing the particular action between heartbeats to keep his
hand
a steady as possible. One of the problems of working on such tiny objects is a
danger of even seemingly tiny external forces ruining the work and one of
these was the vibration caused by the traffic passing outside his workshop so we ended
up working throughout the night when it was quieter however when working on one
sculpture of Alice in Wonderland he accidentally breathed in too hard and
the work was gone. So this is not a job you can do if you suffer from hay fever or
sneezing fits. We have seen nano motors before but now Cockrell School of
Engineering at the University of Texas has created a motor under 1 micrometer
in size which is five hundred times smaller than a grain of salt and small
enough to fit inside a human cell. Now that might seem pretty amazing enough on
its own but this nano size motor is capable for running up to 15
continuous hours at 18,000 revolutions per minute, thats the speed of a turbine
in a jet engine. The power to run the motors comes from first and induced DC
current to assemble the three-part motor and then from an AC current to operate a
motor the tiny motor has been successfully designed assembled and
tested non-biological environment and has performed three tasks it can move
through liquids and can both mix and pump biochemicals at the same time. The idea
is that it could deliver a controlled amount
the drug directly to be affected cells to test its drug delivery capabilities
the researchers coating the surface with biochemicals, the faster the motor spun
the faster the drugs were released ultimately these tiny motors could be
used in nano machines that would be not much bigger than the normal cells and
could be used to target things like cancer cells directly
We're used to seeing computers getting smaller and more powerful but the
biggest stumbling block to making truly tiny computers is that whilst the
physical components can be shrunk the power required he still quite high so
even a tiny computer would need a big battery in comparison. The breakthrough
came in 2008 when the Phoenix processor was created which used a fraction of the
power of previous processes and allowed much smaller a self-contained computers
to be created. The Michigan Micro mote is currently the world's smallest
computer just two millimeters by four millimeters and requires an average of
just 500pW in operation and just 35pW in
stand by or about one million of the power of a mobile phone on standby for
Michigan micromax has a processor, a radio for WiFi communications, a solar
cell and battery for power, a photo cell for communications and can have a
variety of sensors like pressure, temperature and imaging making the Micro Mote a fully
self-contained computer that
can run on just been normal lighting in a room. No physical connections are
required because it can be programmed by picking up a high-frequency strobe light
signal from it's photocell or via the two-way WiFi which has a current range two meters but
the makers are looking at extending the range up to twenty metres. The
applications these tiny computers range from implantable medical chips and smart
sensors to security and information devices. Ever since the beginning of
their existence the makers of robots have taken the inspiration from nature
whether it be in the form of a man or from nature's other wonders like insects. Up
until recently
technological limitations have prevented robots from matching the size of
real-life insects, Robobee has been 14 years in the making when it was first
announced
fly for just a few seconds before crashing now it can hover along preset
path and recently the team at Harvard have shown that they can also get to
swim underwater by using a modified flapping technique which was inspired by
the puffins ability to go from flying to swimming as it dives for fish. The micro
robot which two centimeters in length and weighs just 80 milligrams still has
to fly with a tether to provide it with power because there are still no batteries
small enough to fit yet powerful enough to make it fly. The wings and body are
made from flat layers of laser cut carbon fiber hinged together with
embedded plastic
which are then folded into three-dimensional frame instead of being pieced together
by hand in practice. This works much like the pages of a pop-up book reducing the
complexity and
time required making these tiny robots it uses piezo electric actuators which are
thin strips of ceramic which expand and contract under an electric field to serve
as the wing muscles, these beat independently at a 120
times per second for flying air which is reduced to just 9 times to second when
he swims through water the next stage of the research will be to do the reverse
like birds and beetles can do when they take off from the water and fly into the air.
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