During the golden age of steam trains, passengers were wowed by ever bigger and more powerful engines.
And steam power is still being developed – but these days it’s not so much the bigger the better, as the more microscopic the better, with German scientists having assembled a steam engine measuring just three thousandths of a millimetre.
Researchers at the University of Stuttgart and the Stuttgart-based Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems built the engine using a laser beam and a single particle floating in water.
Size matters: The world's smallest steam engine has to be viewed under a microscope
Researcher Clemens Bechinger said: ‘We've developed the world's smallest steam engine, or to be more precise the smallest Stirling engine.’
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