IBM isn't a name you would usually associate with "movies," but they did something that movie studios like MGM or Columbia have never done before: they created the world's smallest stop-motion film using the smallest of elements.
The film, A Boy and His Atom, was pieced together by frame-by-frame using scanning tunneling microscopes that magnify atoms by 100 million times. In all, the team moved 5,000 molecules in temperatures that reached minus 268 degrees Celsius. The machine grabbed the molecules by using a incredibly sharp needle that "feels" for atoms and attracts them by using an electrical current that pulls them where they need to be. The film took 10 days of 18-hour shifts to create 242 frames that, when put together, show a "boy" and a single atom going on adventures together.
Science and art go great together.
[viaArsTechnica]
