Very small wires are used as electrical connections between elements in integrated circuit chips that make up all computers and electronic gadgets. These wires are made to be less that 1/100th the size of the human hair in order to pack more devices inside the chips. The extremely small size makes it very difficult to determine whether a particular connection is broken or not. Faced with this challenge, the researchers in MRSEC program have developed a technique to establish electrical conduction in the wire by looking at the minute magnetic fields that are generated by current flow. The picture on the left is an example. The bright and dark strips denote the north and south poles of a current, I, flowing along the section of the wire. The outline of the metal line is drawn for clarity. The current, of course, is due to the charges that flow along the metal strip. If the wire were broken, there would be no current flow and no magnetic field is generated. In this case, the wire contains electric charges that do not move. The image then becomes that shown on the right, wherein the dark contrast in the middle arises from the electric field generated by localized charges on the metallic strip. (for further indepth reading, see: R.D. Gomez, et al. Journal of Applied Physics Vol 83, June 1998, pp. 6226-6228.)