"I shrunk down into an M5 chip"
(Science Week, day 1!)
Welcome once again to Science Week, fellow organic and sentient beings.
I typically reach for something biological beyond just the greeting on February 12, but the mood of this video from Marques Brownlee (in collaboration with "Epic Spaceman") felt right for the initiative slot.
A great way to grasp the scale of the cosmos is the exercise of likening our sun and its planets to more familiar spheres like basketballs, ping-pong balls and pearls – then to observe the proportionate distances between them as familiar stretches on the scales of room, parking lots, sports fields. Happily, this exercise regularly occurs in schools and in TV shows and other videos.
With the help of this Blender-adept "spaceman," Marques has beautifully done the opposite, repeatedly "shrinking" himself by factor of a hundred, "passing" the sizes of a grain of rice and a human hair, to the atomic scale, at which today's transistors in consumer computers and smartphones, incredibly, are packed. That's a phenomenon most of us benefit from every day, yet have barely even known to appreciate.
The purpose of this video is not to wade into the question of how such an incredible feat of manufacturing is even possible, but, like any good effort of science communication, it tempts the viewer to venture on and find out.