A Canadian researcher has crafted what could be the world’s smallest gingerbread house—just a tenth the size of a human hair

Travis Casagrande’s miniature gingerbread house features a wreath, a snow-dusted roof, and, of course, a tiny Christmas tree.

But spotting these details would likely require a microscope.

That’s because Casagrande, a research associate at McMaster University in Ontario, created a gingerbread house measuring just one-tenth of a hair’s width—20,000 times smaller than a typical store-bought cookie house.

It’s a tiny yet festive demonstration of creativity. Casagrande shared with Dinogo that he hopes it ignites “scientific curiosity” in those who’ve never explored electron microscopy before.

So how does one create what the university claims to be the world’s smallest gingerbread house?

Forget about using traditional gingerbread.

Using an ion beam microscope, Casagrande sculpted four walls and a roof from silicon. He even carefully etched in a door, windows, and the logos for McMaster University and its Canadian Centre for Electron Microscopy, where this tiny creation was made.

“Some of the construction was quite unconventional, so I had to develop new methods,” he explained.

It all rests on top of a winking snowman, which itself is already tiny compared to the massive strand of human hair beside it. The hair, in comparison, looks like a towering tree trunk.

His regular work is focused on enhancing material efficiency, so creating a gingerbread house and snowman out of silicon was a fun and novel challenge—one he hopes will inspire both the scientific community and Christmas enthusiasts to appreciate the value of small, intricate craftsmanship.

But this isn’t the first time he’s taken on a tiny project: For Canada’s 150th anniversary in 2017, he placed a miniature Canadian flag in the branch of a letter on a penny. That, too, measured just 10 micrometers in length.