Want to draw attention to your work, your university, and the incredible potential of your field of research? Create a clever video that “goes viral” on the web — it might even end up on CNN. That’s what Dr David Cox, a member of the Quantum Detection group at the National Physical Laboratory in West London, has done by creating a video of “the world’s smallest snowman.”

The ‘snowman’ is made of two tiny tin beads, normally used to calibrate electron microscope lenses, which were welded together with platinum. 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. The miniature figure is just 0.01 mm across, or about a fifth of the width of a human hair.

The clever video begins by focusing on some type on a page, and continues to zoom in until it takes you inside a single tiny character on the page, and then drills down further until eventually the ‘snowman’ is revealed. The video was more than just a cute trick. On CNN on Sunday morning, December 20th, after showing the video the reporters segued into a discussion of nanotechnology and how it would guide the future of medicine. Marketing mission accomplished.

Source: Telegraph

Posted December 22nd, 2009 under Intellectual Property Marketing

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