Apertures Shaped as National Borders and Their Fraunhofer Diffraction Patterns

Have we ever considered how elegant a diffraction pattern may appear based on an aperture in the shape of one’s nation? <br>Apertures in the shape of national borders were developed on quartz substrates with a thickness of 170 μm by depositing chromium and using photolithography to etch the national borders, which scaled with the geographical area of each used nation. The nations were selected in order of total area, as provided by the United Nations Statistics Division, starting with the largest nation and including all nations with an area larger than 8 × 10¹⁰ m². Only mainland nations included in the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) document ISO 3166-1 are used.<br>All nations are ranked by geographical size and their FFT calculations and experimental data are presented in an array in the remainder of the document. Nations marked with the letters from A through F are presented in the main text. All Fraunhofer diffraction calculations and experimental data are presented from a perspective similar to the main text, 1.35 mm away from the aperture. All diffraction images measure 400 μm in both the vertical and horizontal directions. For images of the apertures, subgroups of nations are imaged at different magnifications for clarity. Nations #1 - #33, nations #34 - #77, and nations #78 - #113 all measure 340 μm, 170 μm, and 68 μm, respectively, in both the vertical and horizontal directions. <br><br>Lower resolution images are also available in JPEG format.<br>