Wednesday, May 01, 2013
Fun with single atoms
IBM Almaden research has produced "A Boy and His Atom", a stop-motion movie where the frames are scanning tunneling microscope images of carbon monoxide molecules on the Cu(111) surface. Here is the "Making of..." movie as well. Fun stuff. I was particularly amused by Andreas Heinrich's comment that "if I can get a thousand kids to join science rather than go into law school, I'd be super happy." Amen :-)
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3 comments:
It's a cool video. However, if even more kids go into science, won't that depress the salaries and career prospects of existing scientists and engineers? As it is, because of H1-Bs, overproduction of Ph.Ds and the influx of talented foreign postdocs has ruined the career prospects of many folks.
The validity of your premise (that there are too many people in science and engineering, which is depressing salaries and ruining careers) aside, people can get into science, or at least get excited about it, without necessarily getting doctorates.
IBM is in a great position to "get a thousand kids to join science rather than go into law school". They could stop applying for thousands of patents on trivial "inventions".
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