8/21/2006: Close-up of the world's sharpest man-made item
http://cellar.org/2006/sharpestthing.jpg
axlrosen finds it here and I think it was boing boingd as well. Looks huge to us in this image, but this is a tungsten needle: so sharp that the individual round globe-like things you see there are individual tungsten atoms. From the article linked at the source, Quote:
It all seems very impressive, but I don't have a good physics background. All I know is, the next time somebody calls me "needle dick", I'll have a really good comeback: tungsten needle dick. (Oh please, a dick joke is always appropriate. I'm uncouth, or something.) |
an electric tungtsen needle dick for that matter
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I wonder, you would even feel the needle if it were to penetrate your skin?
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1 Attachment(s)
Look out - it's Nano-Snakes on a Plane!!
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Okay, I'll bite. If atoms are whirling fields of nuclear particles...and they are...then how can we "see" an individual atom?
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Quote:
Think about it this way: Of course we have to be able to see atoms- if you can't see atoms you can't see anything, and obviously there is such a thing as sight, so we must be able to see atoms. |
It's all probability. You're seeing where matter probably is, most of the time (it was there at some point, or it wouldn't have been imaged). That's all you *ever* see, it's just that it's easier to grasp the probabilities involved when you're looking at a single atom.
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I think it's a jelly monster.
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lumpies
I think the reason we see them as lumps is that this photo was probably taken with a scanning tunneling microscope. It can resolve to the atomic level, each atom appearing as a foggy gray dot (I believe the image is created by measuring the density of electrons, which of course is greater around an atom). I'm guessing that they took the STM image and applied a few Photoshop filters to make it look way more wickeder.
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heehee... more wickeder. Catchy!
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Ah-ha, so that's what the needles are used for.
According to Bob Wolkow, up in The Great White North(Alberta), quoted in The American Institute of Physics publication, Physics News Update; Quote:
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"The real benefit of the sharp tungsten tips, he believes, will be as superb electron emitters. Being so slender, they would emit electrons in a bright, narrow, stable stream."
Know nothing about atoms, but any TIG welder will tell ya the Tungsten needs to be sharp. Most times they use a grinder. In the field I've seen a few sharp hands use a torch and blow a nice tip. FWIW |
Can you imagine bundling a million of them into a shotgun shell and firing them at a target? As flechettes would they obliterate the target or leave it looking unscathed?
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I was thinking how easily you could run a spit (skewer) through a...
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So .. if someone says to you .. "you're about as sharp as a tungsten needle under a microscope! .. " .... would that be the ultimate put-down of the 21st century?? :rolleyes:
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