Uploaded September 2022 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
BYU engineering students have produced the world's smallest version of the Book of Mormon, writing the entire microscopic text of the book on a 5cm square, using the same process used to manufacture computer chips. Unlike digital and print copies of the scriptures, this engraved version will not degrade and could last millions of years.
BYU's Ira A. Fulton College of Engineering is displaying the microscriptures by 487 Clyde Building (next to the clean room where they were manufactured).
Read more from BYU News:
BYU engineers etch entirety of The Book of Mormon on a microchip wafer
It could be the smallest physical copy of the scriptures to ever exist. A group of innovative BYU electrical engineering students have etched the entire text of The Book of Mormon onto a thin silicon wafer that can fit in the palm of your hand. And to top it off, after engraving the 4.6 cm x 4.6 cm wafer with all 291,652 words contained in the book, the students gave it a gold-plated coating.
“Lots of people can do this and lots of people have done this with the Bible,”
said electrical engineering professor Aaron Hawkins. “But to our knowledge, no one has ever done it for The Book of Mormon. We realized we were probably the only folks out there that had the ability to do it and would think to do it.”
A wafer is a thin slice of semiconductor, usually made out of silicon, that is used to create computer chips. In a normal fabrication process, hundreds of microchips would be created from the wafer. For this group of students, instead of creating dozens of microchips on the wafer, they created dozens of tiny blocks of scriptural text.
To get specific, they engraved those tiny chip-sized squares with 1,497,482 microscopic characters. And because they etched water is now gold-plated as well, it will literally last millions of years.
The group also created wafers loaded with the entire Old and New Testaments. The Old Testament wafer is 4,234,673 characters and is roughly 6.7 cm in diameter while the New Testament is 975,320 characters and 3.7 cm in diameter.
To create the tiny scripture discs, the students obtained the text files for each of the three books and used an existing program to layout the circuits. Once the design was in place, the students used the tech in the cleanroom to etch the pattern into the wafer.
“We’re digging out part of the silicon to form the word. When that’s all done, we just add a coating by evaporating the metal onto the surface. We have the tools to evaporate a thin layer of medal; gold is a common metal to do this.”
Video produced by BYU Video
Producer: Julie Walker
Videographers: Adam Sanders, Barret Schoenrock
Editors: Matt Mitchell, Emily Ooi
Thumbnail image by Nate Edwards BYU Photo
BYU engineering students have produced the world's smallest version of the Book of Mormon, writing the entire microscopic text of the book on a 5cm square, using the same process used to manufacture computer chips. Unlike digital and print copies of the scriptures, this engraved version will not degrade and could last millions of years.
BYU's Ira A. Fulton College of Engineering is displaying the microscriptures by 487 Clyde Building (next to the clean room where they were manufactured).
Read more from BYU News:
BYU engineers etch entirety of The Book of Mormon on a microchip wafer
It could be the smallest physical copy of the scriptures to ever exist. A group of innovative BYU electrical engineering students have etched the entire text of The Book of Mormon onto a thin silicon wafer that can fit in the palm of your hand. And to top it off, after engraving the 4.6 cm x 4.6 cm wafer with all 291,652 words contained in the book, the students gave it a gold-plated coating.
“Lots of people can do this and lots of people have done this with the Bible,”
said electrical engineering professor Aaron Hawkins. “But to our knowledge, no one has ever done it for The Book of Mormon. We realized we were probably the only folks out there that had the ability to do it and would think to do it.”
A wafer is a thin slice of semiconductor, usually made out of silicon, that is used to create computer chips. In a normal fabrication process, hundreds of microchips would be created from the wafer. For this group of students, instead of creating dozens of microchips on the wafer, they created dozens of tiny blocks of scriptural text.
To get specific, they engraved those tiny chip-sized squares with 1,497,482 microscopic characters. And because they etched water is now gold-plated as well, it will literally last millions of years.
The group also created wafers loaded with the entire Old and New Testaments. The Old Testament wafer is 4,234,673 characters and is roughly 6.7 cm in diameter while the New Testament is 975,320 characters and 3.7 cm in diameter.
To create the tiny scripture discs, the students obtained the text files for each of the three books and used an existing program to layout the circuits. Once the design was in place, the students used the tech in the cleanroom to etch the pattern into the wafer.
“We’re digging out part of the silicon to form the word. When that’s all done, we just add a coating by evaporating the metal onto the surface. We have the tools to evaporate a thin layer of medal; gold is a common metal to do this.”
Video produced by BYU Video
Producer: Julie Walker
Videographers: Adam Sanders, Barret Schoenrock
Editors: Matt Mitchell, Emily Ooi
Thumbnail image by Nate Edwards BYU Photo
