Nanoguitar
Electron-microscope image of the world's smallest guitar, based roughly on
the design for the Fender Stratocaster, a popular electric guitar. Its length is 10 millionths
of a meter-- approximately the size of a red blood cell and about 1/20th the width
of a single human hair. Its strings have a width of about 50 billionths of a meter (the size of approximately 100 atoms).
Plucking the tiny strings would produce a high-pitched sound at the inaudible frequency of approximately 10 megahertz. Made by Cornell researchers with a single silicon crystal, this
tiny guitar is a playful example of nanotechnology, in which scientists are building machines and structures
on the scale of billionths of a meter to perform useful technological functions and study processes at the submicroscopic level.
(Image courtesy Dustin W. Carr and Harold G. Craighead, Cornell.)
Link to Cornell news release on the topic
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