Those wacky scientists at the the James Watt Nanofabrication Centre at the University of Glasgow have struck again (see my Jan. 20, 2012 posting for their nod to the Chinese New Year), this time they’ve created a diamond coin to commemorate Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee. From the May 31, 2011 news item on Nanowerk,

The ‘coin’, created at the University’s James Watt Nanofabrication Centre, measures just 750 nanometres across and features an image of the Queen’s profile just 580 nanometres high. A nanometre is one billionth of a metre. Around 1300 of the diamond coins could fit side by side on the width of the smallest letter on a five pence piece, and 2,600 billion of the coins would fill a volume equivalent to that of a pound coin.

For reasons that escape me the University of Glasgow has not made their video of two scientists discussing the diamond coin and their other work with diamonds available for sharing but you can view it here. Meanwhile, here’s what the coin looks like after it’s been magnified for our human eyes,

James Watt Nanofabrication Centre, University of Glasgow

In my April 11, 2012 posting, I mentioned another diamond etched with her profile to commemorate her Diamond Jubilee, this time the work was done by a team at the University of Nottingham.