World’s Smallest Periodic Table Etched Onto Human Hair!

Using focused ion beams, nanoscientists wrote the entire periodic table of elements onto a single human hair, and filmed the whole thing for your edification. As a bonus, watch them etch a Christmas greeting onto a snowflake!

The experts at the University of Nottingham’s Nanotechnology and Nanoscience Centre were able to fit the entire periodic table – including all known actinides and lanthanides! – onto a professor’s single curly hair. That’s so small that the same table could have been copied onto a post-it note well over a million times with room to spare. They believe this is the smallest periodic table ever written. Here’s how they did it:

And, because ’tis the season, here’s another video from the University of Nottingham in which they write “Merry Christmas” onto some newly fallen snow:

[The Periodic Table of Videos and Sixty Symbols]