Posted on 11/23/2008 8:16:02 PM PST by Daffynition
President-elect Barack Obama's image looms larger than ever in the media these days, but now his face has been rendered in 3-D portraits smaller than a grain of salt, using nanotechnology.
The mini-Barack Obamas were made by John Hart, an engineering professor at the University of Michigan, who dubbed them "nanobamas."
Each nanobama contains about 150 million carbon nanotubes stacked vertically like trees in a forest. A carbon nanotube is an extraordinarily strong hollow cylinder about 1/50,000th the width of a human hair.
Hart created the "nano art" to raise awareness of nanotechnology and science.
"Developments like this are an excellent way to bring the concepts of nanotechnology to a broader audience," said Hart, who made the portraits with his colleagues by working late on a Friday evening. "Also, we thought it would be fun."
To create the nanobamas, the researchers converted Shepard Fairey's popular red, white and blue poster of Barack Obama into a line drawing. They shrunk it and printed it on a glass plate with a laser to create a mask. They shined ultraviolet light through the masked glass plate onto a silicon wafer to create the pattern. Then they grew the carbon nanotubes on the pattern, using a high-temperature chemical reaction.
The researchers photographed the nanobamas with an electron microscope. The faces are half a millimeter in size.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
Gigabarf.
terabarf
I always knew we were headed for the Nano-state.
Hollow tubes, eh? Well, at least they resemble the original in a significant way!
Judging the man as Dr. King would advise, i.e., not hy the color of his skin, but by the content of his character, I would think you could stuff all of Obama's charachter in one nanotube and still have room left over.
[singing] Oh yes, we have Nanobamas, we have Nanobamas today...
Nanobamas Created In Laboratory
LiveScience.com | 18 November 2008 | Staff Writing
Posted on 11/18/2008 3:33:56 PM PST by Old Sarge
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