Sam Catchpole Smith/University of Nottingham/EPSRC
The third-place winner in the "Innovation" category depicts exceptionally strong aluminum structures created with a technique called selective laser melting.
At the most basic level, everything is made of tiny atoms.
As a way to recognize that fundamental fact, it seems appropriate that a stunning image depicting one single positively-charged strontium atom just won a prestigious photography award.
The image, which shows the atom trapped by electric fields, was the overall winner of $4 put on by the $4 of the UK.
The photo, taken by David Nadlinger from the University of Oxford, actually shows the light particles re-emitted by the trapped atom, as you can see in the photo below. (That light is hundreds of times larger than the atom itself and can be captured in a visible shot using a digital camera, though you can't see anything the size of an atom without a powerful microscope.)
It's not the only stunning shot from the competition, which also includes photos of the fascinating fluid patterns on a bubble of soap, the structures that cover a butterfly's wing, and a robot learning to take a selfie.
Here's a selection of the winning images.