Heat engines, like steam turbines, use systems relying on thermodynamics to convert the energy from heat into mechanical work. The Industrial Revolution would never have happened if not for the power of heat engines, and we're still using them today. You probably know its most recognizable forms: the automobile engine and the jet engine.

But scientists are challenging the stereotypical notion of the heat engine as a large, metal behemoth. In fact, researchers at the Institute of Physics of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg recently pushed the powerhouse to its farthest limits when they successfully created a heat engine that operates using a single atom.

The team of researchers, who published their findings in the latest edition of the journal Science, captured a single electrically-charged calcium atom in a quadrupole ion trap—also known as a "Paul trap."