When art and science collide, beautiful things happen. That’s the case with the Wim Noorduin’s nanosculptures. For the past few years, this Harvard materials scientist has been using basic chemistry to create beautiful forms so small, you need an electron microscope to see them.
These delicate flower-like forms are smaller than the width of a human hair, but that doesn’t make them any less beautiful. The simplicity of the process Noorduin takes to create them actually makes them even more impressive. He simply mixes chemicals in a beaker to create tiny colourful crystals that grow into a variety of shapes, though he’s developed ways to manipulate the process.
“Over the years, I’ve been growing thousands of these samples, and I’ve tried many ways to stack structures on top of each other, and to sculpt them while they’re growing,” Noorduin told The Creators Project recently. “I notice, of course, that with all these experiments, some things aesthetically simply work better than others. That’s how I started to develop a sort of style in which most of the structures started to look like flowers.”
It’s kind of a bummer they’re so small, actually. Electron microscopes are hard to come by! Then again, size doesn’t matter. [CNET, Creators Project]