World's Smallest Schoolbag!
In the near future, all your school textbooks will be available on the computer. With advances in computer storage, you might be able to store all your textbooks in a device the size of the full stop at the end of this sentence. That's not very practical, but that would make it the world's smallest schoolbag!
Scientists and engineers are always trying to fit more "bits" (the unit of computer storage) into less and less space, so that we can store more videos, books, music and so on in smaller drives. Recently, the brainiacs at IBM were able to squeeze a single bit of data into just 12 atoms, creating the world's smallest storage device.
Computer Storage: 0101100011110010011...
Data on a computer is stored as 0s and 1s (known as binary digits, or bits). The hard disk on your computer has millions of small magnetic particles that are magnetized as 0 or 1, which are read in sequence when you want to listen to music, or look at a picture. A byte is 8 bits, and can be used to store an alphabet letter such as "Y". To store the word "Youngzine", you need 9 bytes, or 72 bits.
Recently at IBM, scientists have been able to squeeze a bit into just 12 atoms (and a word like "Youngzine" under 1000 atoms). Unlike today's hard disk where magnetic particles point in the same direction (like a compass), the atoms in IBM's device point in opposite directions. So you can put more of them in a tinier space without them influencing each other.
It will be a long time before this research becomes a practical product you can buy at Wal-mart, because it was constructed very carefully under very cold temperatures. But it has a lot of promise.
Moore's Law
Gordon Moore, the founder of Intel Corporation (the company that makes the CPU, or the brain inside your computer), predicted that computing power as well as storage capacity will double every 18 months. His prediction has been true for more than 40 years now - see chart on the right!
Just take a look at the progression of storage from 1970s to 2000s:
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In the 1970s, the only way to store something on the computer was a "floppy drive" (see right), that would store much less than a single photo.
Floppy disks - have you seen one?! - In the early 1980s, hard disks became popular - even then, early hard disks only had a few megabytes (1000s of bytes) - hardly enough to store even one Lady Gaga (er, Beatles) song
- In the 1990s, hard disks grew to several gigabytes (1000s of megabytes). The iPod allowed people to carry entire music collections in their pocket.
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In the 2000s, they grew to several terabytes (1000s of gigabytes) so people could store tens of movies. In the meantime, "flash" drives with tens of gigabytes allowed people to carry lots of data in their pockets.
USB Flash Drive - Big servers (like those used by Google or Facebook) now have several petabytes (1000s of terabytes) of storage!
- Wow, wow, wow.. wonder where this will end?
Wow, that´s cool!
This is cool:)
this is cool so i dont need to bring my textbooks home every friday
our textbooks are already on the computer(well our math is but not social studies) my arm always gets achy when we need to bring our textbooks home.
AWESOME!!!!!!!!:)
Awesome!!! I don't carry a backpack but still!
I need to have that because it would save me from huge backpacks beacause I usually get a huge bags in winter beacause we have cold winters and warm afternoons so I stuff my bag with my jacket but the librarians would get fired but also it would save trees.
so
No more back cracking!!! :)
wow
I hope are school books could be electronic some day!
needs a lot of work done to this stuff
so tiny
I must have snapped my back a 100 times over carying my text books, this would be a life saver!
its so cool but it needs some work
I think it is cool that Moore predicted something as extraordinary as this that has held true for as long as it has.
this is so cool! no more back aches. i just hope i wouldn't keep on losing the device if i could lay my hands on one!
backpacks BACKOFF
The future is coming 12 atoms at a time, and very slowly. But still, just about any movie you've ever seen in a chip the size of a pinhead.
That is so awesome!
Hey! We cut down less trees!
Awesome!!! No more backbacks!!! Jeeze, you have to be really really smart to think of how to fit so much information in such a little device. I wonder how small they are going to go with storage devices. Probably just small enough so you can't loose it by turning your head! LOL
nice!!!
Is that even possible to be small like atoms? At least now I wont have to lug around textbooks back and forth from school.
This is so awesome we don't have to carry our heavy backpacks.
WOW that is cool
Wow! I didn't know there was so much math and science put into computer science and technology. I learned now how many conversions there are and how much space is needed to store something! AMAZING!
I think that this would be the best thing ever we would save trees and kids wouldn't hurt their backs by carrying so much. I hope this happens so at my school and others. More trees we're saving the better. i think it is shocking how much they can fit in one thing
Yes less dead trees
this is not that big of a deal, yet it is still pretty amazing at the things technology can do nowadays.
that would be so cool if our school stuff was electronic someday and it would save alot of heavy weight to carry every day to school
I will be in high school when this happens
wowwwwwwww that so cool i am so fascinated by technology and science
i thought that this article was very interesting and i was amazed
Our lives are now starting to revolve around electronics, if you think about it.
Thats cool that all books could be digital. No more back packs that are so heavy you can't feel your shoulders.
I think that is amazing that someone can put so much data into 12 atoms. 12 atoms is super small. I would never be able to do that! The world record is surprising and cool, but I think that Moore's rule is very interesting also. His prediction of computing power and storage capacity would double every 18 months come true. I can bearably win one bet! Also, I would love to carry heavy textbooks that break my back in a light device.
I think that this is really cool! If someday instead of carrying around all of our books to lets just say language arts class, or anything and just simply cary a small device around it would change everything!
i find this trivial compared to some things and if they did make this it would most likely get crushed on the wasy to school so i think it is just a waste of resources
I read a story in my Language Arts once where kids were marveling over a book, and it's contents were about schools, which also fascinated them. I hope the world doesn't come to that.
I would love to not have to carry all my heavy textbooks, but I don't like the idea of having all my learning textbooks on a teeny tiny mechanism. It could easily get lost, and I still think that being able to find things in a textbook and actually using it is a skill many kids should maintain; technology shouldn't take over schools.
However, this is a two-sided argument, even for me. Many people think that everything should be technological; making everything easier. Yet, I feel that then, us humans would stop functioning and actually working and just be absorbed in our miniscule textbooks and "smaller-than-your-thumb!" phones. I think that it is a cool invention, but not necessary.
pretty cool, hunh?
It would be great if everything you needed for school could be on a tech device!
Yes, but imagine everything without books! I wouldn't like that at all. We still need to be able to find things in textbooks and research (and so on).
SOO COOL!
It is sooo cooool
it is so awesome
i mean like electronic everything
this is awesome
That would be so cool if all of our books and information we needed would be on electronics someday. It would be so much easier to change classes and go home with all your books.
I agree. Imagine not having to lug around a heavy backpack filled with textbooks!