Itsy-bitsy Japanese noodles anyone?

[Guest guest]

There are people starving, and theses Japanese scientists are messing

around with itsy-bitsy noodles? Gimme a break!

 

TOKYO - Japanese scientists say they have used cutting-edge

technology to create a noodle bowl so small it can be seen only

through a microscope.

Mechanical engineering professor Masayuki Nakao said Thursday he and

his students at the University of Tokyo used a carbon-based material

to produce a noodle bowl with a diameter 1/25,000 of an inch in a

project aimed at developing nanotube-processing technology.

The Japanese-style ramen bowl was carved out of microscopic

nanotubes, Nakao said.

Nanotubes are tube-shaped pieces of carbon, measuring about one-ten-

thousandth of the thickness of a human hair.

Carbon nanotubes are being explored for a wide range of uses in

electronics and medicine because their structure endows them with

powerful physical properties such as a strength greater than steel.

The ramen bowl experiment included a string of " noodles " that

measured one-12,500th of an inch in length, with a thickness of one-

1.25 millionth of an inch.

" We believe it's the world's smallest ramen bowl, with the smallest

portion of noodles inside, though they are not edible, " Nakao said.

The hardest part was to keep the noodles from rising upright from the

bowl " like alfalfa sprouts, " he said. " The achievement was mostly for

fun. "

The microscopic bowl was first created in December 2006, but revealed

only Thursday after it was entered for a microphotography competition

last week.