The Big Picture
- IBM scientists created a stop-motion film using individual atoms as their subject, resulting in A Boy and His Atom.
- The film was made by dragging individual molecules of carbon monoxide into a small copper sheet using a Scanning Tunneling Microscope.
- The film's purpose was not only to set a Guinness World Record but also to test the limits of data storage using magnets made of atoms.
Ever wonder how small an image can be made into a movie? Well, thanks to the scientists over at the International Business Machines Corporation (aka IBM), we have an answer. Back in 2013, a group of researchers over at IBM wondered if they could create a stop-motion short film using only atoms as their subject. It turns out, they could, and thus A Boy and His Atom was born! But this little film took some pretty big brains to put together. Here's how!
A Boy and His Atom: The World's Smallest Movie
A wayward atom escapes life in a bit and encounters a friend he can dance, laugh and play with.
- Release Date
- 2013-00-00
- Runtime
- 2m
- Main Genre
- Short
- Producer
- IBM Research
IBM Made the World's Smallest Movie Using Only Atoms
Ant-Man isn't the only one who can mess around with microscopic organisms. It turns out that we (or at least IBM scientists) can too! In A Boy And His Atom, we see a young boy named Atom meet and engage with an atom ball. These two play catch together, bounce on a trampoline, and the ball even finds its way soaring into the air and through the clouds. In addition to being a short film, A Boy and His Atom is also the smallest film out there. But how can this be? What does it take to bring atoms to the big (or small) screen? Well, the IBM scientists in San Jose, California thought we might have some questions, so they provided us with some answers.
Along with releasing A Boy and His Atom, IBM produced a companion documentary to explain the process titled Moving Atoms: Making the World's Smallest Movie. In this short explainer, the researchers involved explain that individual molecules of carbon monoxide were literally dragged and placed into a small copper sheet to create each frame. Complete with a scraping sound as the atoms move from one position to another, the scientists involved used a Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM) to move each molecule with an electrical charge. Additionally, the molecules had to be cooled to a temperature of -260 degrees centigrade to prevent the peppy atoms from making any sudden moves.
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Size isn't everything.To understand exactly the size and scale of A Boy and His Atom, we have to understand how big atoms are in comparison to our visible world. "If an atom is the size of an orange, then the orange would be the size of the whole planet Earth," researcher Christopher Lutz explained. That sounds like something the DC Comics superhero also named the Atom would have to explain to his peers in a Justice League meeting. But to go a step further, the Guinness World Records notes that the film "[Comprises of] 242 individual frames with a frame size of only 45 nanometres by 25 nanometres (45 x 25 billionths of a meter)." No wonder A Boy And His Atom is noted there for being the "smallest stop-motion film."
How Was the IBM Atom Movie Made?
The IBM team reportedly worked on A Boy and His Atom from January 29 to February 6, 2013, to complete their film project, and the results speak for themselves. A Boy and His Atom proves a masterful feat in scientific know-how and an impressive move for filmmakers everywhere (and by non-filmmakers, no less!). "I was worried it would be a lot of work, moving these atoms," explained post-doctoral researcher Ileana Rau, "and we've started making some of the frames. It's kinda cool, and it's addictive."
The meticulous process of comprising each frame and then scanning them (each STM scan took nearly five whole minutes) might not have been hard, but it certainly took time. No wonder that the film, made in only a week, only clocks in at 60 seconds. At that rate, if you wanted a whole atom-made feature film, it might take years to put together. "I thought when we first heard that we were going to make a movie out of atoms, I thought, 'That's crazy,'" Ph.D. student Susanne Baumann expressed in Moving Atoms. But what sounds crazy to one person, sounds ingenious to another, such as as Robert Oppenheimer himself. Though, in this case, these scientists aren't becoming death, but are rather manipulating the very molecules that help form and shape life.
In fact, making this movie did more for IBM's research than simply attaining a Guinness World Record. "Really what we wanted to answer was a very simple question: how small can you make a magnet and still use it for data storage?" noted the principal researcher, Andreas Heinrich. A Boy And His Atom helped them find an answer, revealing that only 12 atoms are sufficient to hold every movie ever made. Not even Hollywood's own movie-magic could do something quite like this just yet, but maybe one day this type of atom-based filmmaking and data storage could become a more attainable reality.
A Boy and His Atom and Moving Atoms: Making the World's Smallest Movie can be watched for free on YouTube
