Atomic Force Microscope [video]

7/5/2026 at 2:45:17 PM

I'm always happy to see one of my videos on HN! I'm really glad to be getting back into the habit of making new videos. Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions. See you at Open Sauce!

by bkraz

7/5/2026 at 6:56:30 PM

Your videos are extremely cool. Please keep going!

by noman-land

7/5/2026 at 4:03:43 PM

Thank you so much for all the work you do for us.

by Moosdijk

7/5/2026 at 8:10:32 AM

In my first internship, with a hard disk drive company, I learned how to use an Atomic Force Microscope to measure the roughness of the hard drive platter (the disk). The texture variation is in the order of angstroms or nanometers. It’s incredible how the AFM works like the needle of a record player, not via optics, and sensing at the atomic level.

by hbarka

7/5/2026 at 12:56:58 PM

What's the size difference between the AFM needle and the area of stored magnetic flux on a hard drive platter? If you used an AFM as a sort of record player, scanning along lines of little pits, what sort of theoretical information density could be achieved over the whole surface of the disk?

by 0x0203

7/5/2026 at 2:40:23 PM

This is an advertisement, but it's one of the few I actually enjoy watching, and it suggests a track is "2500 times smaller than a human hair" which puts an upper bound on the size of a bit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXs_9OXRnQo

This doesn't answer your question but your question made me think of this and I thought I'd share for anyone else.

by cornstalks

7/5/2026 at 4:05:15 PM

That video is a perfect description. Hard disk drives are incredible machines, going through many steps to produce the platter. The flying head is also fascinating. To this day I have full working hard drives over over twenty years old, while my SSDs have gone kaput.

The Bay Area used to be the center of these companies’ manufacturing and I was there when they literally unbolted the Varian sputter machines from my company to ship to Malaysia. The likes of Seagate, Western Digital, Conner, Quantum, Maxtor, Micropolis, Hitachi, Fujitsu, IBM, Read-Rite. Also Iomega in Utah. They were all here. They all left practically overnight. They were executive decisions. It was a shocking move and the whole history would make a good documentary or movie.

by hbarka

7/5/2026 at 3:16:11 PM

If they are using the typical human hair = one thou, then the 2500 is suspiciously close to the conversion between inches and millimeters times a power of ten. I get 10 microns

by MobiusHorizons

7/5/2026 at 5:53:53 AM

Applied Science is always worth an upvote

by Groxx

7/5/2026 at 9:24:51 AM

I had never seen his channel and immediately loved it! Awesome stuff!

by knob

7/5/2026 at 10:41:19 AM

Don't need to click the link to know who this will be.

by ZiiS

7/5/2026 at 3:37:10 AM

"I'll spare you the total sample prep details"...

by alhirzel

7/5/2026 at 2:18:59 PM

Honestly and hilariously, it’s a brilliant idea for his specific experiment. Met the exact specs of what he was looking for.

by Aboutplants

7/5/2026 at 6:09:16 AM

I've seen a genius' sperm

by ThrowawayTestr

7/5/2026 at 9:11:07 AM

no, nuto

by ddlsmurf

7/5/2026 at 5:10:25 AM

Great channel

by jsmo