One of the most incredible movies ever made is this stop-motion animated film, made by moving carbon monoxide molecules around on the surface of copper at IBM. It’s incredible to think that when we look at this, we are seeing quantum mechanics – bonding at the nanoscale, and echoes of the wave nature of reality.
There is a short documentary that explains how the movie was made, manipulating the molecules with scanning tunnelling microscopy, which is also worth a watch:
erindubitably
Jessamyn Fairfield