Snowman Tiny beyond Your Imagination

Snowmen   are   snow sculptures customarily built by children  as a part of family project  during winter in cold countries. But the one that we are going to tell you about is no mean child’s play. Great minds at National Physics Laboratory (NPL)   have donned the children’s hat to create a snowman. Hold on guys   this   one   is not the ordinary snowman but rather made   as a product of the extraordinary   Nano Technology. Expert Scientists   at   NPL have  used tiny tin beads usually  taken for electron microscope lenses  calibration to make a snowman measuring 0.01 mm. The  smallest snowman   is just one fifth of the width of a strand  of  hair .

 While the creation, once magnified in a blue light, looks like the product of a child's imagination, it was put together using hi-tech gadgetry. However, far from the thrill of rolling balls of snow around a field to build their masterpiece, it was assembled using tools designed   for   manipulating  nanoparticles .  A focused ion beam was used to carve the snowman's eyes and smile, and to deposit a tiny blob of platinum for the nose. It was put together by Dr David Cox, a member of the Quantum Detection group at the laboratory, who also took the picture. However, Britons searching for the real thing will have to head for the northern hills of Scotland, where forecasters say there is a chance of snow falling over the weekend.

So the scientists at National Physics Laboratory   have gone about making miniature figures  which is creating mega waves in the Nano Technology circuit.

 The   National Physics Laboratory (NPL) is one of the UK's leading science facilities and research centers. It is a world-leading centre of excellence in developing and applying the most accurate measurement standards. 

    The techniques used to create the   Smallest Snowman   are employed by NPL: 
   * To make and fine tune Atomic Force Microscope cantilevers for measuring surface topography. 
   * To manufacture nano scale SQUIDs (Superconducting Quantum Interference Devices) for a wide range of future metrological applications including spintronics, single particle detection, NEMS and quantum information processing. 
    * To measure magnetic properties of very small magnetic systems using quantum hall probes .

A new dimension to one of the craziest  facts of Science that  is made on a small scale  but has a large scale impact on the next level technology.

The Smallest Snowman was set by the Scientist at National Physics Laboratory at London, United  Kingdom on December 5,2009.