The world's smallest working heat engine

A team of German physicists has just built the smallest working heat engine. It uses a single Calcium atom, and runs in four strokes like your car's combustion engine. It is about as efficient as your car at transforming the changing temperature into mechanical energy.
It does not, of course, change "temperature" into mechanical energy - it uses a difference in temperature, and the resulting heat flow, to convert heat energy to mechanical.
 
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