I just had a really amazing experience. I’m in Almaden Ca for work. while here I ran into my friend Don E. Don’s a physicist and a very cool guy. He developed the first techniques for imaging and manipulating individual atoms. He’s famous for having written the letters ‘IBM’ in 18 Xenon atoms.. making it the worlds smallest advertisement Last time I saw Don was last year in LA.. he an I were on a panel at USC… at dinner I told Don about Samstones.. he offered to make me the worlds smallest samstone when his equipment ready.. As it happened,. his atom pusher was off line for service over the past year.. it just came back up this week in o.. Coincidentally, my flights got screwed up today so I had to spend the night in San Jose .. So around 6:30 Don and I sat down at the machine and he helped me write ‘sam’ using 33 carbon monoxide molecules on a plate of copper at -451 degrees F.  The whole image is about 15 by 5 nanometers.. making it the smallest samstone ever made.. I’d venture it’s the smallest tribute ever made as well

 

Here’s Don at the atomic force microscope that he designed.. The screen in front of hi is showing a 50 nanometer of very cold copper.

You use the mouse to pick up single molecules of carbon monoxide and move them around on the copper surface.

It took us about 3 hours.. but we grabbed 33 individual CO molecules and moved them around one by one to spell out sam’s name.

 

Here’e are thetwo wall s of instruments that control the microscope

and the microscope itself.. It sits over a large dewer of liquid helium.

It was great makign this tiny samstone..   it was also very good hanging out with Don.. He’s truly a nice and amazing guy..

 

ok.. gotta sleep now.. more tomorrow

 

nite all, nite sam

-me