The smallest optical mouse is th Z-Nano Mouse manufactured by CyberInc Pte Ltd (Singapore). It measures 42.5 mm (1.67 in) long, 20.5 mm (0.81 in) wide and 17.6 mm (0.69 in) thick and has all functionalities of a regular mouse. It was presented and measured in Singapore, on 10 January 2008.
In February 2008, Swedish scientists announced they had captured footage of an electron riding a wave of light shortly after being pulledaway from an atom. Due to the high velocities of electrons as they orbit an atom in around 150 attoseconds, the team had to develop and use attosecond pulses of laser light in a form of ‘flash photography’
The smallest Nintendo home entertainment system is the Wii. Measuring just 44 x 157 x 215 mm, the Wii is much less bulky than any of its other Nintendo predecessors. It is roughly the same width as three DVD boxes stacked together. Also, with a mass of just 1.2 kg, the Wii is lighter than either the Xbox 360 or the PS3.
The smallest nanotube brushes have bristles with an average diameter of 30 nm, which means that they are more than a thousand times smaller than current commercial brushes. The brushes have been created by researchers of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute of Troy, New York (Dr. Pulickel M. Ajayan), and the University of Hawaii, Manoa, Honolulu (Mr. Vinod P. Veedu, Dr. Anyuan Cao and Dr. Mehrdad N. Ghasemi-Nejhad). The nanotube brushes have multiple functions and have been tested in a variety of tasks that range from cleaning
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In 2005 scientists at Rice University, USA, led by James Tour, revealed a “car” made from a single molecule of mostly carbon atoms that contains a chassis, axles and four wheels made from buckyballs. The entire assemblage measures just 3-4 nanometres across, slightly wider than a strand of DNA.
In March 2009, researchers Hari Manoharan and Christopher Moon, of Stanford University’s Physics Department and Geballe Laboratory for Advanced Materials, were able to write letters so small that they are composed of subatomic pixels no bigger than 0.3 nanometres. The team ‘wrote’ the letters “S” and “U” for Stanford University using a scanning tunnelling microscope to arrange individual carbon monoxide molecules on a copper surface in a complicated two-dimensional pattern. They then used a constant flow of electrons naturally present on the copper surface to
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The smallest muscle in the human body is the stapedius, which controls the stapes in the ear. The muscles is less than 0.127 cm (0.05 in) long.
In August 2005, MPIO (UK) launched the MPIO-One, a 34-g (1.2-oz) media player measuring just 3.2 x 5.4 cm (1.2 x 2.1 in). It can play MPEG-4, WMV, AVI and Div-X video files (as well as MP3, WMA and OGG audio files), and has a 2.64-cm (1.04-in) OLED screen capable of displaying up to 26,000 colours.
The smallest mp3 player is the iPod shuffle, introduced on 11 March 2009 by Apple (USA). It measures just 29.0×31.6×8.7 mm (1.14×1.24×0.34 in) and weighs 12.5 grams (0.44 oz). The iPod shuffle holds up to 1,000 songs and has all of the controls located on the earphone cord.
The world’s smallest functioning mousetrap measures 9mm x 5mm (0.35 x 0.19 inches). It was constructed by Franz Rosenberger (Austria). It is made of wood and metal.