Scientist makes world’s ‘smallest snowman’
’Tis the season for silica; specialist in nanofabrication creates microscopic Frosty
There’s s-no-w way you’ll be able to see this with the naked eye, but scientists at Western University in London, Ont., have created what they call the “world’s smallest snowman.”
Standing three microns tall — thinner than a human hair, which is 40 to 50 microns wide — the smiley figure can only be seen under a microscope.
“It’s just a compelling little image, especially for the time of year,” said Todd Simpson, a scientist from the Western Nanofabrication Facility.
Simpson said he never planned to make the snowman, but created the figure 11 years ago on Dec. 22, 2005, when he stacked three mini silica spheres with the use of electron beam lithography.
He thought it resembled the figure of a snowman and printed a photo to make a Christmas card by drawing on the face and arms in Microsoft Paint.
This year, he found time to add emotion to the tiny snowman by cutting out eyes and a mouth with an ion beam, and adding arms and a button nose sculpted out of platinum.
“It took three seconds to mill the face, two seconds to deposit the nose, and 10 seconds to deposit each arm,” he told the Star.
“It’s obviously something you want to do just before Christmas.
“I had the sample sitting there, waiting for a chance . . . I had some spare time, so I just popped it in and made it up.”
Simpson says the figure helps convey a compelling concrete example of what they do at the Nanofabrication Facility to those who may not easily understand it.
“It’s not easy to find something that’s easy for people to comprehend; most of what we do is pretty complicated and probably kind of boring to most,” he said.
The title holder for the world’s smallest snowman in the Guinness World Records is awarded to the National Physical Laboratory in London, which built a snowman 10 microns wide.