Tag Archives: Guinness World Records

Smallest national flag record achieved to celebrate Canada’s 150th birthday

Courtesy University of Waterloo

This is a partly nanoscale Canadian flag. For those who can’t read the text on the image, it says ‘Cursor Height = 501.7 nanometers [and] Cursor Width = 1.178 micrometers’.

A Sept. 19, 2016 news item on phys.org announces the latest ‘small’ flag,

The Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo set a world record for creating a Canadian flag measuring about one one-hundredth the width of a human hair.

Guinness World Records granted the inaugural award for smallest national flag to the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) at Waterloo for the flag measuring 1.178 micrometres in length. It is invisible without the aid of an electron microscope.

A Sept. 19, 2016 University of Waterloo (Ontario, Canada) news release, which originated the news item, provides more detail about how the flag was fabricated (Note: A link has been removed),

Nathan Nelson-Fitzpatrick, nanofabrication process engineer at IQC, led the creation of the flag with assistance from Natalie Prislinger Pinchin, a Waterloo co-op student from the Faculty of Engineering. They created it on a silicon wafer bearing the official logo of the Canada 150 celebrations using an electron beam lithography system in the Quantum NanoFab facility at Waterloo.

“Canada 150 celebrates our past, present and future,” said Tobi Day-Hamilton, associate director of communications and strategic initiatives at IQC. “The future of Canadian technology is firmly set in the quantum world and at the nano-scale, so what better way to celebrate the lead up to 2017 than with a record-setting, nano-scale national flag.”

The record-setting flag was unveiled at IQC’s open house on September 17 [2016], which attracted nearly 1,000 visitors. It will also be on display in QUANTUM: The Exhibition, a Canada 150 Fund Signature Initiative, and part of Innovation150, a consortium of five leading Canadian science-outreach organizations. QUANTUM: The Exhibition is a 4,000-square-foot, interactive, travelling exhibit IQC developed highlighting Canada’s leadership in quantum information science and technology.

“I’m delighted that IQC is celebrating Canadian innovation through QUANTUM: The Exhibition and Innovation150,” said Raymond Laflamme, executive director of IQC. “It’s an opportunity to share the transformative technologies resulting from Canadian research and bring quantum computing to fellow Canadians from coast to coast to coast.”

The first of its kind, the exhibition will open at THEMUSEUM in downtown Kitchener on October 14 [2016], and then travel to science centres across the country throughout 2017.

You can find the English language version of QUANTUM: The Exhibition website here and the French language version of QUANTUM: The Exhibition website here.

There are currently four other venues for the show once finishes its run in Waterloo. From QUANTUM’S Join the Celebration webpage,

2017

Science World at TELUS World of Science, Vancouver

TELUS Spark, Calgary

Discovery Centre, Halifax

Canada Science and Technology Museum, Ottawa

I gather they’re still looking for other venues to host the exhibition. If interested, there’s this: Contact us.

Other than the flag which is both nanoscale and microscale, they haven’t revealed what else will be included in their 4000 square foot exhibit but it will be “bilingual, accessible, and interactive.” Also, there will be stories.

Hmm. The exhibition is opening in roughly three weeks and they have no details. Strategy or disorganization? Only time will tell.

Pandas can sell anything including IBM’s nano chisel

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Regular readers may recall a March 12, 2014 posting about an IBM nano chisel and a National Geographic Kids magazine cover contest. The winning cover was chosen by an online ‘crowd’,

National Geographic Kids March 2014 cover [downloaded from http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids/guinness-world-record-smallest-magazine/]

Next, IBM used its nano chisel to create the world’s smallest magazine cover, which was announced at the USA Science & Engineering Festival held in Washington, D.C, April 26-27, 2014. From an April 26, 2014 news item on Azonano,

National Geographic Kids today claimed its ninth GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS® title for the Smallest Magazine Cover, using patented technology from IBM, at the USA Science & Engineering Festival in Washington, D.C.

To create the record-setting cover, IBM scientists invented a tiny “chisel” with a heatable silicon tip 100,000 times smaller than a sharpened pencil point. Using this nano-sized tip, which creates patterns and structures on a microscopic scale, it took scientists just 10 minutes and 40 seconds to etch the magazine cover onto a polymer, the same substance of which plastics are made. The resulting magazine cover measures 11 × 14 micrometers, which is so small that 2,000 could fit on a grain of salt.

For the curious, there are more technical details about the ‘nano chiseling’ process in either my posting or the Azonano news item.

As for the other eight GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS® that National Geographic Kids has claimed (from the April 26, 2014 news item on Azonano,

National Geographic Kids’ eight previous GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS titles are: Longest Line of Footprints (10,932 prints measuring two miles, set in 2004); Largest Collection of Plush Toys (2,304 stuffed animals, set in 2006); Longest Chain of Shoes (10,512 shoes, set in 2008); Most Items of Clothing Collected for Recycling (33,088 items of denim clothing, set in 2009); Most People Doing Jumping Jacks in 24 Hours (300,265, set in 2011), Largest Collection of Shoes to Recycle (16,407, set in 2013); Most People Running 100 Meters in 24 hours (30,914, set in 2013); and Largest Online Photo Album (104,022 pictures, set in 2013).

Congratulations to National Geographic Kids! And, good luck selling your nano chisel, IBM.

Going back to the stone ages? IBM using a chisel to create cover for National Geographic Kids magazine

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It’s a nano chisel of course but it’s still disconcerting and amusing to think of IBM using a ‘stone age tool’. A March 11, 2014 news item on Nanowerk describes the project for which this chisel is being used,

IBM scientists are partnering with National Geographic Kids to set a Guinness World Records title for the world’s smallest magazine cover.

…

IBM scientists have invented a tiny chisel with a nano-size tip 100,000 times smaller than a sharpened pencil point. Using this tip the scientists will etch the magazine cover onto sliver of polymer (plastic) called polyphthalaldehyde. If they are successful, the cover will be so small that 2,000 of them could fit on a grain of salt.

The March 6, 2014 IBM news release, which originated the news item, describes the technology in more detail,

The tip, similar to the kind used in atomic force microscopes, is attached to a bendable cantilever that controllably scans the surface of the substrate material with the accuracy of one nanometer—a millionth of a millimeter. By applying heat and force, the nano-sized tip can remove substrate material based on predefined patterns, thus operating like a “nanomilling” machine or 3D printer with ultra-high precision.

Similar to using 3D printer, more material can be removed to create complex 3D structures with nanometer precision by modulating the force or by readdressing individual spots.

…

After it’s miniaturized, the tiny cover will be unveiled on April 25 at the 2014 USA Science and Engineering Festival [held April 26-27, 2014] in Washington DC. If you plan to attend the event stop by the IBM and National Geographic Kids booth to meet the scientist who created the cover and to see it for yourself.

IBM scientists see more applications in their chisel’s future than magazine covers and maps (a previous demonstration of the chisel’s abilities, a video about that project follows this excerpt from the news release) Note: A link has been removed,

This new capability may impact the prototyping of new transistor devices, including tunneling field effect transistors, for more energy efficient and faster electronics for anything from cloud data center to smartphones.

IBM scientists envision other applications as well in the emerging field of quantum systems. One way to address and connect such quantum systems is via electromagnetic radiation or light. The new technique may be used to create high quality patterns to control and manipulate light for this purpose at unprecedented precision.

The technology has been licensed by IBM to the Swiss start-up SwissLitho who brought the desktop-sized tool to market under the name NanoFrazor.

This video runs over six minutes and sound quality varies (unexpected in an IBM video),

That mention of* a scanning tunneling microscope (STM )at the end is a veiled reference to the IBM scientists Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer who created the STM in IBM’s Geneva labs, an accomplishment for which they received a Nobel prize. The STM and the atomic force microscope (AFM) are two important and similar means of accessing and manipulating matter at the nanoscale .

Getting back to the Guinness World Records, the world’s smallest magazine cover, and IBM (from the National Geographic Kids contest page),

Help National Geographic Kids set a Guinness World Records title for the world’s smallest magazine cover, using IBM technology. Vote for your favorite NG KIDS cover from 2014 so far, and with help from IBM we’ll shrink the winner to microscopic proportions. …

… check back on April 11 to find out which cover will be turned into the world’s smallest magazine cover. After it’s miniaturized, the tiny cover will be unveiled on April 25 at the 2014 USA Science and Engineering Festival.

There are five covers to choose from including this one,

February 2014 / Gems [downloaded from http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids/guinness-world-record-smallest-magazine/]

The other four covers feature great pictures of animals.

* Corrected the preposition changing ‘to’ to ‘of’ on April 29, 2014.

Irish teach nanoscience, nanotechnology and new materials to 5th & 6th classes (grades)

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Ireland’s CRANN (Centre for Research on Adaptive Nanostructures and Nanodevices) located in Trinity College Dublin seems to be hosting both the AMBER (Advanced Materials and BioEngineering Research) Centre and the NanoWOW education initiative. A Nov. 12, 2013 news item on Nanowerk describes NanoWOW and AMBER in more detail,

Ireland’s new materials science research centre has announced the launch of their new NanoWOW lesson plans. Designed for 5th and 6th class pupils the plans will introduce Irish Primary students to the world of nanoscience, nanotechnology and materials science.

…

Linked to the existing Primary science and maths syllabus while also including environment, history and art, the new lessons will enable school children to understand how the properties of materials can change on the nanoscale and provide opportunities for them to work like scientists through discussion, investigations and activities.

The Nov. 12, 2013 AMBER/CRANN news release, which originated the news item, gives more details about how NanoWOW is being launched during Ireland’s Science Week,

To celebrate the launch of NanoWOW, St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra are using this year’s Science Week theme, “Exploring the XTRA-Ordinary” to find out more about nanoscience and materials science amongst their students and staff. They have organised a number of CPD workshops to introduce primary school teachers to the NanoWOW lessons and will have guest speakers from AMBER visiting during the week.

Dr Cliona Murphy, Lecturer in Science Education, St Patrick’s College said “I think this is a wonderful initiative and we are very pleased to collaborate with AMBER on further developing the educational resources and bringing them to primary schools throughout Ireland. The NanoWow investigations provide children with ample opportunities to work like scientists and to develop their scientific skills and knowledge. Through engaging with the NanoWow activities the children are also provided with numerous opportunities to develop their language and thinking skills and to use a range of mathematical skills. The NanoWow educational programme provides children with first hand experience of the ground breaking scientific research that is currently being conducted in Ireland and gives them an insight into careers that are potentially achievable for them.”

Prof. Stefano Sanvito, AMBER said, “The new NanoWOW lesson plans are designed to engage school children in a creative way that fosters their curiosity in nanoscience. We also want to develop their interest and understanding so they are aware of nanoscience as part of their everyday lives and the potential future career options that would be open to them.”

Prof. Sanvito went on to comment, “Ireland is currently ranked 6^th worldwide for nanoscience research and 1^st in the EU for European Research Council starting grants. With Nanoscience linked to €15 billion or 10% of Irish exports and 250,000 jobs in sectors like technology, biomedicine, pharmaceuticals, energy and more, the importance of making nanoscience relevant amongst school pupils is obvious for future development”.

The launch of the new NanoWOW lesson plans builds on the success of the “Nano in My Life” lesson plans for secondary schools which were launched by CRANN during Science Week 2011. Targeted at Transition Year students, the resource provides teachers with nanaoscience lesson plans free of charge. With nanonscience due to feature as part of the new Leaving Certificate, the NanoWOW lesson plans aim to build on this success and bring the subject to a wider audience.

Ireland’s Science Week is being held from Nov. 10 – 17, 2013, according to the 2013 Science Week theme webpage (on Ireland’s Science Week website),

Science Week 2013 – Exploring the XTRA-Ordinary

Every day we encounter XTRA-Ordinary processes that are behind the ordinary! From the water that comes out of our taps, to the grass that grows in our fields, to our body’s ability to heal itself and play sports – there are XTRA-Ordinary processes happening all around us. Science Week 2013 is calling on you to come and explore the XTRA-Ordinary too!

The objective of Science Week each year is to promote the relevance of science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) in our everyday lives and to demonstrate their importance to the future of Irish society and to the economy.

This year we want to show everyone in Ireland that there are scientific processes behind everything around us, most of which are taken for granted every day. Exploring the XTRA-Ordinary invites you to stop, take note and explore the processes that are happening around you every day.

Co-ordinated by Science Foundation Ireland, Science Week 2013 runs from 10 to 17 November 2013 and is a collaboration of events run by colleges, schools, libraries, teachers, community groups, researchers and students throughout Ireland.

For anyone wanting to know more about the NanoWow initiative and the lessons on offer, go here. As for AMBER, that was launched in October 2013 according to an Oct. 24, 2013 CRANN news release,

Minister Bruton launches new €58 Million SFI Research Centre- AMBER

Advanced Materials and BioEngineering Research (AMBER) Centre positions Ireland as a global leader in the areas of materials and medical device development for industry.

More than 45% of multinational jobs wins are connected to SFI research.
Directly supporting 99 highly skilled jobs.
Investment of €23 million from 18 industry partners across diverse sectors.
Industry partners include Intel, DePuy, Medtronic, Merck Millipore and SAB Miller.
Research programme will translate science into new discoveries and devices for a range of sectors such as the development of the next generation computer chips and new medical implants and pharmaceuticals that will improve patirnt care.

The Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Richard Bruton TD, together with the Minister for Research & Innovation, Sean Sherlock TD, today (Thursday) launched the Advanced Materials and Bio-Engineering Research Centre (AMBER).

The Centre is funded by the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation through Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) in the amount of €35million. This funding is leveraged with an additional €23million from 18 industry partners.

AMBER will work to translate science into new discoveries and devices for a range of sectors, particularly ICT, medical devices and industrial technologies.

It’s very exciting to see what they’re doing in Ireland. And, until now, I’d completely forgotten about Canada’s annual Science and Technology week. This year’s was held from Oct. 18, – 27, 2013. While this celebration seems to have been winding down for a number of years,, perhaps 2013 marks a revitalized event,

Thousands of Canadians across the country joined together on Friday, October 18^th [2013] to establish a World Record for the largest science lesson. [emphasis mine] Thank you to all of the organizers and all of the participants who made this inspiring event possible.

Over the next few weeks we’ll be collecting all the required evidence and forwarding it to Guinness for the final number to be calculated and an announcement to be made. As soon as the process is finished we will announce the results on Science.gc.ca.

Of course, Guinness World Records traces its roots back to Ireland, From the History webpage of the Guinness World Records website,

10 November 1951

Sir Hugh Beaver, Chairman of the Guinness Brewery, is out hunting game birds by the River Slaney in County Wexford, Ireland, when he misses a shot at a golden plover. Sir Hugh wonders if the plover is the fastest game bird in Europe but can’t find a reference book that answers the question.

I’m sure the Irish could rival Canadians for the size of the science lessons they might wish to hold. Perhaps Canadians should offer a friendly challenge?

It was a long, long way to A boy and His Atom

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Gerd Binnig’s and Heinrich Rohrer’s scanning tunneling microscope (STM) has fueled much of the nanotechnology research effort around the world. Developed in an IBM laboratory about 35 years ago (ETA May 2, 2013: the year was 1981), it was the first microscope that allowed researchers to access material at the nanoscale (there’s more about these researchers and their accomplishment in my May 26, 2011 posting). Don Eigler, also working for IBM, was the first to use an STM to manipulate the placement of atoms on a surface. In 1989, he ‘nudged’ xenon atoms into the shape of three letters, IBM (there’s more about Eigler in this Wikipedia essay).

Today, May 1, 2013, IBM has released an atomic movie, A Boy and His Atom, which was made with their seminal scanning tunneling microscope,

If the story is not apparent to you, here’s how the IBM May 1, 2013 news release describes the movie,

The movie’s plot line depicts a character called Atom who befriends a single atom and goes on a “playful journey.” This journey involves dancing, jumping on a trampoline, and playing catch. It’s unlikely to win any Oscars, but that’s not really the point; it’s designed to get people inspired about science.

In almost five years of writing this blog, this is the first time I’ve seen a physical description of an STM and it is one big sucker (from the news release),

… Christopher Lutz, Research Scientist, IBM Research. “It weighs two tons, operates at a temperature of negative 268 degrees Celsius and magnifies the atomic surface over 100 million times. [emphasis mine] The ability to control the temperature, pressure and vibrations at exact levels makes our IBM Research lab one of the few places in the world where atoms can be moved with such precision.”

Making a movie with an STM is not as easy as it might seem (from the news release; Note: a link has been removed),

Remotely operated on a standard computer, IBM researchers used the microscope to control a super-sharp needle along a copper surface to “feel” atoms. Only 1 nanometer away from the surface, which is a billionth of a meter in distance, the needle can physically attract atoms and molecules on the surface and thus pull them to a precisely specified location on the surface. The moving atom makes a unique sound that is critical feedback in determining how many positions it’s actually moved.

There is a corporate agenda associated with this particular public relations gambit, from the news release,

As computer circuits shrink toward atomic dimensions — which they have for decades in accordance with Moore’s Law — chip designers are running into physical limitations using traditional techniques. The exploration of unconventional methods of magnetism and the properties of atoms on well-controlled surfaces allows IBM scientists to identify entirely new computing paths.

Using the smallest object available for engineering data storage devices – single atoms – the same team of IBM researchers who made this movie also recently created the world’s smallest magnetic bit. They were the first to answer the question of how many atoms it takes to reliably store one bit of magnetic information: 12. By comparison, it takes roughly 1 million atoms to store a bit of data on a modern computer or electronic device. If commercialized, this atomic memory could one day store all of the movies ever made in a device the size of a fingernail.

“Research means asking questions beyond those required to find good short-term engineering solutions to problems. As data creation and consumption continue to get bigger, data storage needs to get smaller, all the way down to the atomic level,” continued Heinrich [Andreas Heinrich, Principle Investigator, IBM Research]. “We’re applying the same techniques used to come up with new computing architectures and alternative ways to store data to making this movie.”

Guinness World Records has acknowledged A Boy and His Atom as the world’s smallest movie. For now.

Nanoscale book ‘Teeny Ted from Turnip Town’ in* Guinness World Records

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Professor Karen Kavanagh (Simon Fraser University [SFU] in Vancouver, Canada) and Robert Chaplin, a self-styled artist and publisher, have announced that their nanoscale book title ‘Teeny Ted from Turnip Town’ has just been declared the world’s smallest book by Guinness World Records. From the SFU Oct. 9, 2012 news release,

Teeny Ted from Turnip Town is officially the world’s tiniest reproduction of a printed book. Produced in Simon Fraser University’s Nano Imaging lab and measuring a mere 0.07 X0.10 millimeters, the 30-micro-tablet book has been added to the Guinness Book of World Records.

The book’s publisher, Robert Chaplin, created the nano book in 2007, after being trained to use a focused gallium ion beam (FIB) by the SFU lab’s managers Li Yang and Karen Kavanagh.

Chaplin designed and carved each page of the book into a polished piece of single crystalline silicon by sending the FIB system instructions about where to mill. The FIB has a gallium beam with a diameter of little more than seven nanometers, so each letter consisted of lines with 40 nm widths.

“Each letter takes a few seconds, so a whole book adds up in time to something probably not useful yet for commercial production,” says Kavanagh. “We need more beams moving in parallel – which is not impossible. Once scribed into silicon the book will last for a million years or more.”

Reading Teeny Ted from Turnip Town requires the use of a scanning electron microscope.

The book is a tinier read than the two smallest books formerly cited by Guinness: the New Testament of the King James Bible (5 X 5 mm, produced by MIT in 2001) and Chekhov’s Chameleon (0.9 X 0.9 mm, Palkovic, 2002). The head of a pin is about 2 mm.

A framed copy of the certificate from the Guinness folks hangs on the lab’s wall while the book, valued at around $15,000, is kept in a tiny box in a bank vault.

Kavanagh goes on to discuss the five-year wait to hear about their Guinness World Records application and Chaplin notes his future plans for ‘Teeny Ted’.

“Guinness has many requests and they take some time to weed out the good ones,” says Kavanagh of the near five-year wait. While there were plans to sell copies, only the one book was made.

Chaplin now has plans to make hardcopy versions of the nano book – a fable written by his brother about Teeny Ted’s victory in the turnip contest at the annual county fair – and is currently seeking investors via kickstarter.ca.

I have previously menti0ned ‘Teeny Ted’ both in a May 21, 2009 posting (scroll down to the final paragraph and then 1/2 way down the paragraph) and in my Nanotech Mysteries wiki here on the Scientists get literary page.

*’is’ changed to ‘in’ on March 20, 2023

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Commentary about nanotech, science policy and communication, society, and the arts

Tag Archives: Guinness World Records

Smallest national flag record achieved to celebrate Canada’s 150th birthday

2017

Pandas can sell anything including IBM’s nano chisel

Going back to the stone ages? IBM using a chisel to create cover for National Geographic Kids magazine

Irish teach nanoscience, nanotechnology and new materials to 5th & 6th classes (grades)

It was a long, long way to A boy and His Atom

Nanoscale book ‘Teeny Ted from Turnip Town’ in* Guinness World Records