ABSTRACT
Mankind has been driven over hundreds of years toward miniaturization of devices for various reasons. Some of these reasons are merely aesthetic and some are to attain increased functionality. However, only during the late 20th century, when the investigation of the engineering and physics of systems involved a very large size scale decrease of more than three orders of magnitude (i.e., 0.001), has the issue of size had significant impact on the “relevant” physical phenomena. These large-scale reductions have come about via the engineering of microelectronic and MEMS devices and on to the extreme scale reduction of quantum mechanics at the atomic level. The issue of relevance can arise in a number of ways.
