High-Speed Microscopic Engine Found

This thing runs on calcium and has speeds of 8 centimeters per second.

That's the equivalent of you walking the length of more than three football fields in one second.

Now thats fast for something so small !

www.livescience.com...

LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 12 December 2005
08:10 am ET

In 1702, the famous Dutch scientist Anton van Leeuwenhoek made an interesting discovery while gazing at some pond water through a hand-made microscope: He observed a bell-shaped organism that used a long, rapidly contracting stalk to attach itself to objects in its environment.

More than 300 years after Leeuwenhoek first observed Vorticella convallaria, as the microscopic pond organism is now called, scientists are finding that its spring-like stalk is one of the fastest cellular engines ever discovered.

The World's Smallest Motor
By Bjorn Carey & Robert Roy Britt
LiveScience
posted: 12 April 2005

www.livescience.com...
06:46 am ET

it makes me wonder how they build them. and imagine if we could harness it on a life sized scale. we'd be crusin then