Category → Miscellaneous
“A Boy and His Atom”: The World’s Smallest Movie
Forget pushing electrons, IBM researchers-turned-filmmakers have moved 5,000 atoms to make a stop-motion film–the world’s smallest, confirms Guinness World Records. How can you watch such a tiny movie, you ask? Well, the frames in the film are magnified about 100 million times. (To give perspective: “If an atom were the size of an orange, then the orange would be the size of the whole planet Earth,” the researchers say.)
Meet Adam and his toy atom:
And you thought Disney/Pixar was good at tugging on your heartstrings with no dialogue and bare-bones animation. But in comparison to Disney’s Oscar-winning “Paperman,” which is a little longer than 6 minutes and had dozens of animators, this team of IBM researchers used the tools they had in their lab to make the 242-frame “A Boy and His Atom.” The team used a scanning tunneling microscope to drag atoms along a surface, then took pictures after each move to make the stop-motion film. I’ll let them explain:
For more on how it was made, watch all of their behind-the-scenes videos here.
h/t Chemjobber via Beth Halford
In Print: Horse. It’s What’s For Dinner
The Newscripts blog would like to be closer Internet buddies with our glossy print Newscripts column, so here we highlight what’s going on in the current issue of C&EN.
Horse: Potential party crasher. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Some may be worried about recent news reports of horse DNA being detected in processed beef. Alex Tullo, however, isn’t one of them. The C&EN senior correspondent explores the recent uproar over horse meat in this week’s Newscripts print column, discussing the Food Safety Authority of Ireland‘s detection of horse DNA in burger products as well as the efforts of New Mexico-based firm Valley Meat to sell horse meat in the U.S. But the most provocative part of the column comes when Alex remembers the time from his childhood when his dad, in line with the culinary traditions of his Italian family, cooked horse steaks for dinner. Alex writes that his dad had a friend “acquire horse meat for him somewhere in New Jersey.”
Alex says the story reflects his dad’s sense of humor, but it’s also just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Alex’ unconventional food adventures. As Alex tells the Newscripts blog, he loves frog, tolerates alligator, and adores boar. “I usually get these kinds of meat when I am traveling,” he says. “I don’t have the nerve to prepare them myself.”
Despite his appetite for the unconventional, however, Alex can understand the reasons behind the recent uproar over the discovery of horse DNA in beef. Horses “represent too much to the culture,” he says. “Go to any city park, you’ll find statues of military leaders mounted on horses.” Nevertheless, he maintains that there are unintended consequences that can come from not slaughtering horses. For instance, “feral horses are a big problem in the Southwest,” he says.
Alex predicts that the public will experience many more horse-meat-style scares in the future, especially given the increasing use of DNA testing to authenticate food (a topic that, he points out, C&EN Senior Editor Sarah Everts actually reported on back in 2009). “We’re going to learn a lot about what we have been eating over the next couple of years,” Alex predicts.
Looking back at our time in New Orleans
When ACS last convened in New Orleans in 2008, the city was still getting back on its feet after Hurricane Katrina stormed through. This time, the mood was much different. First of all, the convention center has undergone a major facelift, and it looks really nice! The French Quarter was even more colorful than I remembered, and meeting attendees took time out to explore the rich culture and cuisines of the city. As for me, I had the most amazing oyster po’ boy sandwich from the famous Mother’s restaurant.
Here’s a look back at some of my favorite moments from the 2013 ACS spring national meeting in New Orleans, and be sure to check out the meeting photospread in this week’s issue of C&EN: http://cenm.ag/pics.
In Print: ACS Member Finds Success On ‘Jeopardy!’ And Millipedes Light Up
The Newscripts blog would like to be closer Internet buddies with our glossy print Newscripts column, so here we highlight what’s going on in the current issue of C&EN.
Answer: These topics appear in this week’s print Newscripts column. Question: What are a “Jeopardy!” champion and a fluorescent millipede?
All smiles: Whitener shows off his pearly whites during his “Jeopardy!” run. Credit: Jeopardy Productions
In April 22′s C&EN, associate editor Emily Bones chronicles American Chemical Society member Keith E. Whitener Jr.’s recent winning streak on television’s “Jeopardy!” In the fall of last year, Whitener won the quiz show seven times, nabbing $148,597 in cash plus an additional $100,000 for being the first runner-up in last February’s Tournament of Champions.
It’s tough to hear of Whitener’s success and not assume he had an easy time on the syndicated game show. But according to Emily, the Tournament of Champions, a two-week-long competition featuring prior “Jeopardy!” winners, was particularly challenging for Whitener. She remembers Whitener telling her, “Since everyone there was at least a four-time champion, the games tended to fly by. I’m not particularly fast on the buzzer, so it was a little bit intimidating for me.”
Whitener attributes his “Jeopardy!” success to his scientific pedigree—he researched endohedral fullerenes during his time as a Yale University grad student, and he currently works as a postdoctoral researcher of graphene surface chemistry at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C.—which helped him clean up in the science categories. Emily, who is a former high school chemistry teacher, however, thinks something else might have been afoot during Whitener’s impressive run.
19th-Century Medicine In New Orleans
Strolling around the French Quarter on my last day attending the spring ACS national meeting in New Orleans, I stumbled across the New Orleans Pharmacy Museum, a 19th-century apothecary shop filled from floor to ceiling with bottles and jars containing crude drugs, herbal medicines, and even voodoo potions. For those of you who didn’t get a chance to visit this gem of a place, check out this virtual tour I put together–and be sure to visit the next time ACS visits New Orleans in spring 2018!
#ChemMovieCarnival – The Absent-Minded Professor
Chemistry has made many appearances in films—sometimes depicted accurately, more often not so much. This week, there’s a blog carnival devoted to chemistry’s role in movies. The carnival is being curated by @SeeArrOh over at Just Like Cooking, and can be followed at #ChemMovieCarnival.
I’m going to go way back to my youth for my offering, as this movie is partly to thank/blame for my interest in science.
It’s Disney’s The Absent-Minded Professor, from 1961. Here’s a promo:
Now, I didn’t see this when it was first released—at least, not that I remember. Back then, my concerns were limited to crying for food, producing its various end products, then crying some more. My first memory of seeing the film was on TV, on The Wonderful World of Disney or one of its incarnations, on a Sunday evening in the late Sixties. Let’s say I was seven or eight.
Apparently, flubber is based on polyvinyl acetate. Check the board for any Texas carbons!
The films stars Fred MacMurray as our protagonist, Ned Brainard, a professor at fictional Medfield College, a campus which was the setting of several other films from Disney Studios.
In addition to his teaching duties, Prof. Brainard is enthusiastically engaged in a little garage chemistry. He becomes far too engrossed in his work one evening and forgets (absent-minded, remember?) his other engagement and his scheduled wedding. There’s a mildly destructive but non-injurious explosion, which serendipitously creates the real star of the film, a bouncy, levitating polymer soon to be known as flubber.
This material has 1001 uses! Well, it probably does, but we only get to see a few. Like make super bouncy balls! Iron it onto sneakers so you can fix a basketball game! Make a car fly! Have a rival arrested on suspicion of a DUI! Secure a potentially lucrative Defense contract!
NEVER sniff your reactions. And, dude, where’s your PPE?
Flubber is even used to thwart the villain, Alonzo Hawk (Who shows up as the baddie in several Disney films, and is portrayed by Keenan Wynn. Alonzo Hawk holds the distinction of being Wynn’s second-most-awesomely-named character, after—naturally—Colonel “Bat” Guano.)
I haven’t seen, and don’t intend to ever see, the colorized version of The Absent-Minded Professor or the retitled remake with Robin Williams, because I am a pain in the a purist.
Interestingly, the main inspiration for MacMurray’s portrayal of Ned Brainard was Hubert Alyea, professor emeritus at Princeton. Dr. Alyea, who died in 1996, was renowned for his demonstrations of chemistry principles. The sometimes explosive nature of these demonstrations earned Professor Alyea the nickname, “Dr. Boom.”
As an added video bonus, here’s a version of Professor Alyea’s popular lecture on the nature of scientific discovery, entitled ”Lucky Accidents, Great Discoveries and the Prepared Mind,” given in 1985:
Finally, and sadly, I have yet to make flubber. I still hold out hope, however, that the next reaction I run that gets stupid on me will produce, instead of the usual uncharacterizable, polymeric pile of craptar, something with more flubbery qualities. Thus far, the only flight such material has achieved is while joining the contents of the nearest chemical waste container.
Back to the drawing board.
Amusing News Aliquots
Ants maximize their time on the smooth felt (white) and minimize their time on the rough felt (green) to reach their destination in the fastest, albeit indirect, way. Credit: Simon Tragust/NBC News
Silly samplings from this week’s science news, compiled by Bethany Halford, Jeff Huber, and Sophia Cai.
Wonder how ants descend mere minutes into a picnic? Ants optimize routes for speed, a la Fermat’s principle of least time. [NBC News]
Ladies, looking for a fertile fella? Seems men who sport kilts “have significantly better rates of sperm quality and higher fertility.” From the Scottish Medical Journal, of course. [Improbable Research]
Researchers believe frog feet could be used to aid intestinal health. Connoisseurs of French food say, “We’re way ahead of you.” [ScienceDaily]
Forget anxiety meds, Tylenol shown to help dampen fears of existential uncertainty or death. [Gizmodo]
Not that we would try it, but there’s some interesting chemistry behind the marijuana-infused spirit known as the Green Dragon. [PopSci]
Feeling lazy and unmotivated? Blame your lazy and unmotivated parents … preferably via the Internet, so you don’t have to get off the couch. [Huffington Post]
Dogs who have been spayed or neutered live longer than those who haven’t. Canine community reconsiders its animosity toward Bob Barker. [e! Science News]
And you thought running columns was tedious. What about studying where people stand in an elevator? [NPR]
Check out a related video: