本集内容

Scientists have built the 'world's smallest violin'

科学家们制造出了 “世界上最小的小提琴”

文字稿

Here it is. The world's smallest violin, on this chip.

它在这里。这是世界上最小的小提琴，就在这块芯片上。

Scientists at Loughborough University believe they have created the world's smallest violin using nanotechnology.

拉夫堡大学的科学家们认为他们用纳米技术制造出了世界上最小的小提琴。

The violin is smaller than a human hair which is typically between 17 and 180 microns in diameter.

这把小提琴比人类的一根头发丝还要细，头发丝的直径通常在 17 到 180 微米之间。

It was produced to test the university's new nanolithography system to build and study tiny structures.

制造出这把小提琴是为了测试该大学用于构建和研究微小结构的新型纳米光刻系统。

So, how do they do this?

那么，他们是怎么做出这把小提琴的呢？

We do that by getting a very atomically small, what you could think of as a needle.

我们通过一个原子级别的微小物体来实现这个想法，你可以把它想象成一根针。

We heat it up, and we then drag it through this polymer-layer that we put on, so that we can write in a particular what we would call a 'pattern'.

我们将其加热，然后在我们铺设的聚合物层上拖拽它，从而能够以特定的方式刻写出所谓的 “图案”。

Now, the violin is just a microscopic image rather than a playable instrument.

现在，这把小提琴只是一个微观图像，而不是一件可以用来演奏的乐器。

Why did these scientists make it?

为什么这些科学家们制作了这样的一把小提琴呢？

To be fair, it's a violin you cannot play.

实话说，这是一把不能弹奏的小提琴。

It's very tiny, so you couldn't kind of pick on the strings, but we thought it was a very good example to try out how far we can push our new system.

它太小了，所以你不能拨动它的琴弦，但是我们认为这是一个非常好的例子，因为可以用它来测试我们新系统所能做到的极限。

Building the world's smallest violin may all seem like fun and games, but a lot of what we've learned in this process has essentially laid the groundwork for the research that's going to be implemented here.

制造世界上最小的小提琴看上去可能是一件轻松好玩的事情，但其实我们从这个过程中学到的许多东西基本上都为即将在这里展开的研究奠定了基础。

So, making one tiny violin can help these resea rchers find new ways to use nanotechnology in mobile phones and computers.

因此，制作一把微小的小提琴能够帮助这些研究人员找到在手机和电脑中应用纳米科技的新方法。