A Boy And His Atom: The World's Smallest Movie

IBM
11 HN recommenders · recommended in 10 months, 2013–2025
YouTube
28.2M views · 13 years ago · animation · evergreen

IBM's short stop-motion film in which a boy plays with a single atom, made by moving individual atoms with a scanning tunneling microscope and capturing each position as a frame. It was promoted as the world's smallest movie.

HN people share it as an entertaining showpiece of atom-scale stop-motion, and many simply submitted it as worth watching.

“IBM made a stop-motion animated movie from individual atoms.”
Animation principlesVisual storytelling & cinematography
#stopmotion#atoms#ibm#shortfilm#microscopy

25 comments from Hacker News

m
@mtviewdave2022 · in “A Boy and His Atom: The Smallest Movie (2013)”
Submitted the video to Hacker News.
RecommendsView on HN
m
@manjana2021 · in “The Smallest Movie (2013)”
Submitted the video to Hacker News.
RecommendsView on HN
d
@dgellow2021 · in “A Boy and His Atom: The Smallest Movie (2013)”
Submitted the video to Hacker News.
RecommendsView on HN
u
@unreal372020 · in “A Boy and His Atom: The World's Smallest Movie”
Submitted the video to Hacker News.
RecommendsView on HN
s
@supercopter2019 · in “A Boy and His Atom: The World's Smallest Movie”
Submitted the video to Hacker News.
RecommendsView on HN
n
@npt42792016 · in “A Boy and His Atom: The World's Smallest Movie”
Submitted the video to Hacker News.
RecommendsView on HN
k
@kens2016 · in “What are “actual pictures” of atoms actually pictures of?”
The linked video "A Boy And His Atom: The World's Smallest Movie" is entertaining. IBM made a stop-motion animated movie from individual atoms. ▶ this video
RecommendsView on HN
b
@bane2014 · in “A Boy and His Atom: The World's Smallest Movie (IBM)”
Submitted the video to Hacker News.
RecommendsView on HN
v
@vpj2014 · in “A Boy And His Atom: The World's Smallest Movie [video]”
Submitted the video to Hacker News.
RecommendsView on HN
m
@mannjani2013 · in “World's *Smallest* Movie By IBM”
Submitted the video to Hacker News.
RecommendsView on HN
e
@eamonncarey2013 · in “IBM create animation on a molecular scale”
Submitted the video to Hacker News.
RecommendsView on HN
m
@mncharity2025 · in “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 ▶ this video Making of: link
CitesView on HN