NIST researchers holding steady in an atomic-scale tug-of-war

How hard do you have to pull on a single atom of - let's say - gold to detach it from the end of a chain of like atoms? It's a measure of the astonishing progress in nanotechnology that questions that once would have interested only physicists or chemists are now being asked by engineers. To help with the answers, a research team at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has built an ultra-stable instrument for tugging on chains of atoms, an instrument that can manoeuvre and hold the position of an atomic probe to within 5 picometres, or 0.000 000 000 5 centimetres...

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