The scientific research project "Feynman's Flowers" is an open invitation to the general public to help advance the state of knowledge in the world, using only your ordinary average computer and a very small amount of your time.
The researchers behind this project have gathered many images of individual molecules using an instrument called a Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM). The public is invited to help out by measuring the relative position of the molecule in one or more of the images, and by gathering this information over very many images the researchers will be able to gain knowledge about the electronic and magnetic properties of the molecule.
The project is named partly in honor of Feynman because of his inspirational talk "There's Plenty Of Room At The Bottom" on the topic of the universe at an extremely small scale, and partly for the characteristic flower shape of the molecules as seen in the STM images examined in this project.
And of course, if you have been following Friends of Tuva online for long enough and if you have a particularly good memory, you will recall that the Friends of Tuva website was originally hosted by the STM group at the University of Manitoba. You can't escape the STM!
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