The world's smallest guitar is 10 micrometers long -- about the size of a single cell -- with six strings each about 50 nanometers, or 100 atoms, wide. Made by Cornell University researchers from crystalline silicon, it demonstrates a new technology for a new generation of electromechanical devices. Photo by D. Carr and H. Craighead, Cornell. The above image (508 x 327 pixels) is the digital image created by the electron microscope, and is the highest-resolution version available. ITHACA, N.Y. -- The world's smallest guitar -- carved out of crystalline silicon and no larger than a single cell -- has been made at Cornell University to demonstrate a new technology that could have a variety of uses in fiber optics, displays, sensors and electronics. The "nanoguitar" -- made for fun to illustrate the technology -- is just one of several structures that Cornell researchers believe are the world's smallest silicon mechanical devices. Researchers made these devices at the Cornell Nanofabrication Facility , bringing microelectromechanical devices, or MEMS, to a new, even smaller scale -- the nano-sized world. The guitar has six strings, each string about 50 nanometers wide, the width of about 100 atoms. If plucked -- by an atomic force microscope, for example -- the strings would resonate, but at inaudible frequencies. The entire structure is about 10 micrometers long, about the size of a single cell. A scanning electron microscope photo of the guitar (see above) won the award for best scanning electron micrograph at the 41st Electron,