Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed

Moving Atoms: Making The World's Smallest Movie

Name: Moving Atoms: Making The World's Smallest Movie
Description: A short IBM behind-the-scenes documentary on how researchers moved individual atoms to make the world's smallest movie. It introduces the scientists and their work on atomic memory and data storage.

IBM

Documentaries

YouTube

Cited on HN 3 times, 2014–2025, never outright recommended score 0

Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

HN commenters link it as the making-of companion to IBM's atom stop-motion film.

A short IBM behind-the-scenes documentary on how researchers moved individual atoms to make the world's smallest movie. It introduces the scientists and their work on atomic memory and data storage.

3 citations · Documentaries

Hardware (other)Materials science Fundamental physics Documentaries Hardware & Electronics

3 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@ColinWright Nov 2014 Cites it

on HN thread A Boy and His Atom: The World's Smallest Movie

Submitted many times, and yet it never gets any discussion. The only comment on all the previous submissions (from a quick, desultory search) is this: ======== How it was made : [this video] What are the ripples? : [link] ======== Similarly, it never seemed to get much attention, judging by the severe lack of up-votes. Here are the previous submissions I found (some deleted): [link] [link] [link] [link] [link] [link] [link]

How the atom movie was made.

View on Hacker News

@gus_massa Mar 2019 Cites it

on HN thread A Boy and His Atom: The World's Smallest Movie

It's nice to see it again, but remember that this was done in (2013). More info: Wikipedia page: [link] How it was made: [this video]

Making-of video for the atom movie.

View on Hacker News

@mncharity Mar 2025 Cites it

on HN thread What Killed Innovation?

> So what next? LLM discussion of visualizations? I did guerrilla usability testing around teaching scale, which included this video[1] (stop-motion animation using CO molecules). Lots of people asked "What are those ripples?". IBM even had a supplementary webpage addressing this (which I no longer see, even on archive). People could easily ask this with me standing beside them, but not so much if viewing the content online. Which raised the UI question of how to encourage such. With LLMs, perhaps people will be able to ask questions of a visualization? What is that? Why is that? What about ...? I don't understand ... Does this mean ...? [1] IBM's A boy and his atom [link] Making of: [this video]

Making-of video for IBM's stop-motion atom animation.

View on Hacker News