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Cornell University researchers created a miniature guitar using crystalline silicon, 10 microns long with six strings about 100 atoms wide each. It can be played with miniature lasers using an atomic force microscope and produces a 40 megahertz signal. The guitar was created to publicize nanotechnology.
It’s said to be the world’s smallest musical instrument, about the size of a human red blood cell, and you can play it with miniature lasers using an atomic force microscope, if you have one, but what researchers at Cornell University have really created in 2003 it was a media-friendly way to publicize the new world of nanotechnology. The miniature guitar was made of crystalline silicon, 10 microns long, and had six strings about 100 atoms wide each. When strummed by a laser, it produced a 40 megahertz signal believed to be one of the highest tones ever recorded.
Play “Free Bird,” man:
The sound of a nano guitar, modeled in the shape of a classic rocker guitar, is beyond the reach of the most sensitive microphone. An acoustic signature of sound was measured by computer calculation.
In 2003, X-ray telescopes monitoring a black hole in the Perseus galaxy detected tones 57 octaves below human hearing, presumably the lowest note ever detected.
A nanometer is one billionth of a metre. The nano guitar is only 10,000 nanometers long, or one-twentieth the diameter of a human hair.
