It’s always six o’clock project

by Eva and Franco Mattes

worlds smallest snowman

this minuscule model -- about a fifth the width of a human hair -- is not made out of snow. It's constructed of two tiny tin beads that are usually used to calibrate an electron microscope, and welded together with platinum.

It's built by David Cox, a nanotech expert at the Quantum Detection Group of Britain's National Physical Laboratory.

The remarkable flourish of his smiling snowman is its little happy face, carved into the top orb using a focused ion beam.