If you thought the field of nanotechnology is too serious for simple folks to ever comprehend, then take a look at Nanobama - a fun project created by a team of research scientists at the University of Michigan, to bring awareness about what nanotechnology can offer to the world of imaging. Headed by John Hart, this team has come up with miniature faces of U.S President-elect Barack Obama made from carbon nanotubes - tiny hollow cylinders of carbon with the diameter of each being tens of thousands of times smaller than human hair, but possessing a strength several times greater than steel.

These "nanobama" structures are so tiny that their images have been taken using optical and electron microscopes. To give you an idea, each face of Obama that you see in the image above is roughly only ten times thicker than human hair! Why Obama? Not a political statement, says the team. However, it is an attempt to bring the many uses of nanostructures into public understanding, an effort which they hope will spawn public and private support for further research and education in the nano domain.

For the curious, there is also a step-by-step account of how the entire endeavor was carried out. Awesome.

Via Boston.com.