Japanese scientists create microscopic noodle bowl

Tag : Bowl Noodle
Japanese scientists say they have usedcutting-edge technology to create a noodle bowl so small it can beseen only through a microscope.
Mechanical engineering professor Masayuki Nakao said Thursday heand his students at the University of Tokyo used a carbon-basedmaterial to produce a noodle bowl with a diameter 1/25,000 of aninch in a project aimed at developing nanotube-processingtechnology.
The Japanese-style ramen bowl was carved out of microscopicnanotubes, Nakao said.
Nanotubes are tube-shaped pieces of carbon, measuring aboutone-ten-thousandth of the thickness of a human hair.
Carbon nanotubes are being explored for a wide range of uses inelectronics and medicine because their structure endows them withpowerful physical properties such as a strength greater than steel.
The ramen bowl experiment included a string of "noodles" thatmeasured one-12,500th of an inch in length, with a thickness ofone-1.25 millionth of an inch.
"We believe it's the world's smallest ramen bowl, with the smallestportion of noodles inside, though they are not edible," Nakao said.
The hardest part was to keep the noodles from rising upright fromthe bowl "like alfalfa sprouts," he said. "The achievement wasmostly for fun."
The microscopic bowl was first created in December 2006, butrevealed only Thursday after it was entered for a microphotographycompetition last week.