Podcast:Yoctonewtons: The Smallest Recorded Force

This week on the Physics Central Podcast, I talk with physicist Dan Stamper-Kurn about making the smallest measurement of a force ever recorded.  He and his group (including lead author Sydney Schreppler) applied a force to a cloud of 1200 atoms, using a laser. Their measurement came out to 40 yoctonewtons: that's 40 x 10-24 newtons (if you drop an apple from a third story window, it hits the ground with about 1 newton of force).The reason this measurement is significant is because it gets to...