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Nature Nanotechnology 3, 129–130 (1 March 2008) | doi:10.1038/nnano.2008.48

Nanomechanics: Crossing a bridge into the unknown

Charles H. Mielke & Alexander V. Balatsky

In November 1940, a suspension bridge over the Tacoma Narrows in Washington state in the US began oscillating in gale force winds and eventually collapsed in a spectacular manner. Recently Florian Beil of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit|[auml]|t in Munich and co-workers in Germany and the US built a bridge that was some two billion times smaller but could oscillate in a more extreme manner without collapsing.