The Sharpest Object Ever Made 304
ultracool writes "Forget the phrase 'sharp as a tack.' Now, thanks to new University of Alberta research, the popular expression might become, 'sharp as a single atom tip formed by chemically assisted spatially controlled field evaporation.' Maybe it doesn't roll off the tongue as easily, but considering the researchers have created the sharpest object ever made, it would be accurate."
The birth of a new acronym: (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The birth of a new acronym: (Score:2)
Re:The birth of a new acronym: (Score:5, Funny)
"Single Tip of Atom By Field (Assisted & Controlled) Evaporation)
STABFACE
Re:The birth of a new acronym: (Score:5, Funny)
SCAT-CAFE
Spacially Controlled Atom Tip by Chemically Assisted Field Evaporation.
I think it might dooo fine so long as nobody digs up the meaning of scat.
Re:The birth of a new acronym: (Score:5, Funny)
That plus it adds the punchline to, "Where do dung-beatles go for a light meal?"
Re:The birth of a new acronym: (Score:2)
Re:The birth of a new acronym: (Score:2)
Re:The birth of a new acronym: (Score:2)
Scat
Jazz singing in which improvised, meaningless syllables are sung to a melody.
Which brings the music of Scatman [wikipedia.org] to mind. Quote a lot worse than some other meanings of the word.
Re:The birth of a new acronym: (Score:2, Funny)
"Well, he's not the sharpest SATFBCASCFE in the drawer."
Oh, wait...
Re:The birth of a new acronym: (Score:3, Funny)
You are sharp as a CASCFET!
Oblig - (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oblig - (Score:5, Funny)
Nitrogen? (Score:5, Funny)
Nitrogen?? That chunk who wears a dress-size seven? She sneezes crisco. Sharp? Yeah, like a marble. Wake me up when we get to Kate Moss waif-like Hydrogen. Then I can carve my initials on tubby Boron.
Re:Nitrogen? (Score:2)
Re:Nitrogen? (Score:2)
Too complicated (Score:5, Funny)
How about, "sharper than a tack?"
Has a nice ring to it, don't you think?
Pardon me but, (Score:3, Funny)
I know the submitter is tring to be whitty, but I'd have to use 'sharp as a bowling ball' to describe his attempt. Surely there must have been a better way of ann
Re:Pardon me but, (Score:2, Funny)
If by 'witty' you mean "copy-and-pasted first paragraph of the article", then yes, the submitter is witty.
Sharper than my +5 Vorpal Sword? (Score:3, Funny)
-Eric
Re:Sharper than my +5 Vorpal Sword? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Sharper than my +5 Vorpal Sword? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Sharper than my +5 Vorpal Sword? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sharper than my +5 Vorpal Sword? (Score:2)
Snicker-snack! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Too complicated (Score:2)
"Sharper than a cricket stump", with a nod to Murray Walker.
Not sharp enough! (Score:3, Funny)
Mad scientists of the world (and Canada), unite to make my dreams come true!!!
Re:Not sharp enough! (Score:2)
And since the tip of this thing is 1 atom wide, can you split more than 1 atom with this before the tip is worn down?
Re:Too complicated (Score:2)
Is actually not accurate; as there would probably not be any objects as sharp as that.
Still not as sharp as... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Still not as sharp as... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Still not as sharp as... (Score:5, Informative)
You are aware that that list only shows the three mods with the most percentage?
Get dull? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Get dull? (Score:5, Funny)
As long as it is only used to poke really soft, non-abrasive things, you should be good to go.
Of course, some nay-sayers might ask why you would ever need The Sharpest Object Ever Made to poke holes in chocolate pudding, but who needs that kind of negativity?
Re:Get dull? (Score:2)
Re:Get dull? (Score:4, Funny)
Do they thrown in a russian nuke in a motorcycle side seat with those glass knives?
Re:Get dull? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Get dull? (Score:2)
Re:Get dull? (Score:5, Interesting)
"Such a pointy pyramid of metal atoms would normally just smudge away spontaneously..." I'll let you actually RTFA for the hilarious, biting conclusion.
Re:Get dull? (Score:2)
Re:Get dull? (Score:5, Informative)
In THAT application, the small size of the point is of great advantace without ever physically touching anything.
Not really (Score:5, Informative)
Let's first define "sharp". No object in the world is a perfect edge ending in a clean zero-width edge. All knives, pins, etc, have a tip that, under a powerful enough microscope looks "blunt". What you'd see would be something like a pretty rounded "tip". What makes it "sharp" is that it's a very small surface.
In other words, imagine two cones, both ending up in a bit of a section of a sphere. Except one is a 0.01 inch radius and the other is a 1 inch radius. What makes the first one sharp and the other one blunt? Pressure. Pressure equals force divided by surface. The surface rises with the square of that radius. So the first one needs 10,000 times less force to produce the same pressure. You can create enough pressure with your thumb to push a tack's small tip through wood, but you'd need an industrial press if you wanted to push a 1 inch steel ball into wood.
In other words what makes something sharp is simply having a small enough tip. You need the same pressure to break through a given material. Having a smaller tip just means you can reach that pressure with less force. At some point you need very little force, and at that point we consider the object to be "very sharp".
How does that help us here? Let's say you had such a pyramid, and let's say you managed to break off the atom at the tip. So now you have a "blunt" tip that's made of a 2x2 atom square. That's still _incredibly_ sharp. It's million times smaller than the tip of a tack or pin, hence it would need accordingly less force to push through the material of your choice.
In other words, forget about breaking off an atom. You'd coukd lose _thousands_ of layers from that tip and still count as sharp.
Re:Not really (Score:5, Interesting)
There should be a special moderation category for this kind of comment: "Score: 5, Excellent example of why Slashdot kicks Digg's ass and gets read religiously every day by hundreds of thousands of geeks even though the actual articles often suck".
I am less and less impressed every time some twit actually compares sites like Digg to Slashdot, as if they have anything in common besides posting links to geeky articles. I come to Slashdot every day to get insights from commenters who are more intelligent or more well informed than myself. I can pretty much be assured that, no matter what the subject of the article, if I read enough posts I will come away with a well-rounded understanding of it based on seeing several different well-written viewpoints.
Thank you for a very interesting post.
Aleut harpooner (Score:5, Interesting)
Dmitri "Raven" Ravinoff -- An Aleut native who works as a mercenary. His preferred weapons are glass knives - undetectable by security systems and reputed to be molecule-thin at the edges - and throwing spears. He travels on a motorcycle whose sidecar has been replaced with a hydrogen bomb that will automatically detonate if his heart stops beating.
On another technicality, isn't pencil lead actually made up of sheets a single molecule thick?
We could arm minjas [askaninja.com] (midget ninjas) with these molecular spears and graphite shurikens to make the real ultimate killing power even more ultimaterer.
Re:Aleut harpooner (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Aleut harpooner (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh and for nigh-trivial - check out National Geographic segments on this - it's a bitch & a half to get a consistant & usable blade (something sharp to accidently cut yourself with appears much easier).
Re:Aleut harpooner (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Aleut harpooner (Score:2)
No, these are actually stacks of graphite sheets, a bit like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Graphit_gitter. png [wikipedia.org]
Re:Aleut harpooner (Score:2)
Re:Aleut harpooner (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Aleut harpooner (Score:2)
Sharp? (Score:5, Funny)
super-fine electron microscope (Score:2)
Ancient tools/weapons were close (Score:2, Informative)
they didn't need all that research and science, just a couple rocks!
But HOW Sharp?? (Score:2, Insightful)
If it's that sharp ... (Score:2)
Accurate? (Score:2)
Cyberpunk weapons (Score:4, Funny)
Bread (Score:2, Funny)
Until I can shave with it... (Score:2)
Re:Until I can shave with it... (Score:2)
-Rick
Re:Until I can shave with it... (Score:2)
Re:Until I can shave with it... (Score:2)
> three million dollars for this sort
> of thing by the time it hits the market.
And you just _know_ they are already working on a version with NOT one but THREE points to follow on after that, at $11 million/cartridge.
sPh
Ok, that is sharp, but... (Score:2, Insightful)
According to Mick Dundee... (Score:4, Funny)
Picture! (Score:5, Funny)
5M x amplification
.
Scanning Tunneling Electron Microscope (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Scanning Tunneling Electron Microscope (Score:5, Informative)
That said, better tips mean better images, especially with larger surface features, and also lower field emission voltages, which means applications in electron microscopy and even flat-panel display technology.
That said, I've make single-atom tips (of the sort discussed in this article) in the lab on a regular basis over the past several years with an ion sputtering-based process, a technique that is not limited to tungsten (tungsten is hard, but oxidizes, meaning the tip will not withstand removal from an ultra-high vacuum environment). This is a very interesting technique, but claiming it to be the sharpest object ever made is certainly overstating the achievement.
Super thin. (Score:3, Funny)
But... (Score:3, Funny)
Are you crazy? (Score:2)
Um, Yeah, That's Funny... (Score:5, Funny)
This is HUGE news in the nano scanning tunnel microscope world! Combined with the ability to determine an electrons spin, this could really open up new research results in a lot of fields. Good to see so many comedians on
Re:Um, Yeah, That's Funny... (Score:2)
would that mean bad news in the nano world?
got one!!! (Score:2)
*waves it around*
*drops it on desk*
Ah crap, anyone got a spare one.... ;-]
JajNoo.... (Score:2)
or how about... (Score:4, Funny)
I hope it's guarded well (Score:5, Funny)
Troll?!? (Score:2)
And it would be funny no matter who was in office. It just happens that this time it's true!
Re:I hope it's guarded well (Score:2)
Please see Family guy episode #211 Mr. Griffon Goes to Washington if you don't understand the joke.
Not the first (Score:2)
Posted on slashdot about a year ago. Its a dupe at the U of Alberta. Wake me when they use a Hydrogen atom at the tip, with an accentuated electron orbit which adds a sharper 'tip'.
OT - those link underline ads (Score:2)
Those in the article seem to be from someone called ContentLink, but I've also seen them done by IntelliTXT. Their idea of context is usually so wrong as to be laughable. For example, in that article, the sentence "Technically speaking, they were able to coat peripheral atoms near the peak with nitrogen, making it a one atom-thick, tough protective paint job
One-atom tips are routinely made (Score:4, Interesting)
The business end of a scanning tunneling microscope is often a one-atom tip. Those are made by cutting a wire of some suitable metal (tungsten, or platinum/iridium), hoping to get a sharp tip. Such tips look like this [purdue.edu]. As you can see, sometimes the break gives you a very sharp one-atom point, but the area around it is ragged.
The technology for making these tips is embarassingly simple. [nanoscience.com]
Electrochemical etching is used to make better-formed STM tips. [unt.edu] Electrochemical etching with STM feedback to determine when the best form has been reached does even better.
I'll be impressed... (Score:2)
And when they do, I want to be somewhere far, far away.
How close does a katana come to this? (Score:5, Interesting)
Googlespace, on my first few searches, didn't turn up any numbers for the edge of a katana. It's bound to be a long way from a single atom, but it would be fun to know just how close or far it is.
summary (Score:2)
OT: related question (Score:3, Funny)
Re:OT: related question (Score:3, Funny)
Cooking (Score:2)
IF you had a knife with a single atom edge, how long would that last, and how would you re-sharpen it?
I started thinking about this in regards to cooking but for any application how would you keep this sharp?
1 atom? wouldn't that be sheared off during the first use?
I would assume a pyramid form, 1 atom supported by 2 or 3 underneath it and those supported by 6 and so on, even up to 5000 atom
Arrowheads? (Score:2)
I wonder how close 'veritable' is to 'actual'?
Oh, THAT kind of "sharp"... (Score:2)
Fun and Games (Score:2)
First application (Score:2)
I call bullshit.... (Score:2)
Riiiiight (Score:2)
I can't imagine ever meeting anyone smart enough to warrant memorizing such a phrase.
Re:rubbish (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Make it available... (Score:2)
Re:I bet (Score:2, Informative)
Harmless. (Score:2)
The atoms it's moving through would just re-bond behind it.
Batman of the Future (Score:2)
My only question is... with a sword so sharp, why the heck doesn't the sword sheathe break apart? Does it have a one atom thick clip or what?
Re:Batman of the Future (Score:2)
The sheath wouldn't have to have any magical strength -- it would just have to prevent the edge from hitting the back -- the rest of the sword isn't one atom thick. It could work as a wedge so that the edge never touches the sheath. (It makes sense for regular sheaths to do this as well, to avoid dulling.)
Sharp IS pointy. (Score:2)
adj. sharper, sharpest
1. Having a thin edge or a fine point suitable for or capable of cutting or piercing.
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pointy Audio pronunciation of "pointy" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (point)
adj. pointier, pointiest
Having an end tapering to a point.
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Something pointy can be dull or sharp, like an edge can be dull or sharp.