Saturday, December 25, 2010 Smallest Christmas card: University of Glasgow set world record GLASGOW, Scotland, UK--Nantotechnology experts from the Scotland's University of Glasgow, led by Professor David Cumming, produced a Christmas card
featuring a Christmas tree etched on a tiny piece of glass,
which is is 200 micro-metres wide by 290 micro-metres tall
, setting the world record for theSmallest Christmas card. Photo:The World's Smallest Christmas Card is so small that more than 8,000 of them could fit on a first-class stamp. (enlarge photo)
Invisible to the naked eye, theWorld's Smallest Christmas Cardis so small that 8,276 of them could fit on an area the size of a postage stamp.
"The card is 200 micro-metres wide by 290 micro-metres tall," Professor David Cumming, who made the card, said in a statement on the university's website.
"To put that into some sort of perspective, a micro-metre is a millionth of a metre; the width of a human hair is about 100 micro-metres.
"You could fit over half a million of them onto a standard A5 Christmas card - but signing them would prove to be a bit of a challenge."
"The process to manufacture the card only took 30 minutes. It was very straightforward to produce as the process is highly repeatable - the design of the card took far longer than the production.
The colours were produced by a process known as plasmon resonance in a patterned aluminium film made in the university's James Watt Nanofabrication Centre.
The electronics industry is taking advantage of micro and nano-fabrication technology by using it in bio-technology sensing, optical filtering and light control components. These applications are critical in the future development of the digital economy and the emerging healthcare technology markets.
This technology could eventually find its way into cameras, television and computer screens to reduce the manufacturing cost.
The Guinness world record for the Longest greeting card exchange was set by Warren Nord of Mesa, Arizona, USA and Thor (Tut) Andersen of Ashtabula, Ohio, USA exchanged the same Christmas card every year from 1930-87, a total of 57 years.
Guinness World Records also recognized the most valuable Christmas card, which was sold at auction in Devizes, Wiltshire, UK on 24 November 2001 for £20,000 ($28,158) and bought by an anonymous bidder.
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