www.otton.org

A nanoguitar, devised at Cornell years ago, has been “played” for the first time by shooting laser light at the silicon “strings.” A newer version of the guitar, shown above, twangs at a frequency of 40 megahertz, some 17 octaves (or a factor of 130,000) higher than a normal guitar.

Link (via)

Plus a better article, courtesy of Google. Although pumping a “string” up to radio frequencies with laser light seems like an intriguing alternative to quartz, I wonder if the most interesting thing here is the showmanship behind the project - a nanoscale silicon rod vibrating at 40Mhz ain’t that interesting, but dress it up as the world’s smallest guitar (a flying V, no less!) are you’re going to get a lot more press attention (and, presumably, funding).