Admit it: at some point in your life, you’ve quoted Jeff Goldblum as Dr. Ian Malcolm in order to proclaim that just because science could do something, it doesn’t mean that science should. And when it comes to atomic bombs, reanimated dinosaurs, or whatever a Geostorm is, that’s a decent, fair-minded sentiment.
Sometimes, however, science does something that appears on the surface not to be something anyone should do…but it’s cool. Was there a need for a fidget spinner tinier than your fingernail, besides breaking a world record that never existed before? Bear with us (that’s a pun; you’ll see).
Via Geyser of Awesome and Geekologie, the product of eight people working together over two months is a 0.2 inch fidget spinner. Amazingly, it actually works with a human finger still, although it appears to help if you have a bit of a fingernail.
So what’s the point? Well, it helps parent company MinebeaMitsumi justify yet another product they already make: the world’s smallest ball bearing, at 1.499 millimeters. It’s not just the size that is justified, though, but also, as Yoda might say, the notion that “judge me by my size, do you?” is outmoded thinking. It’s not just about small, but about having “the smallest, the longest rotation and the smoothest,” per project leader Shigeru None.
We have to wonder if the joy and bragging rights of such a tiny spinner cancels out the anxiety a user may feel that they’ve lost it, only to see it hiding behind a nearby speck of dust three hours later. But what do you think? Let us know in comments below.
Image: Guinness World Records
Learn about more record setters!
- 245 souls set a simultaneous-rope-jump record.
- Record-breaking hoverboard flight.
- World record-setting robot dance.
