The world's Most Powerful Microscope. Lawrence Berkeley National Labs just turned on a $27 million electron microscope. It has the ability to make images to a resolution of half the width of a hydrogen atom. This makes it the most powerful microscope in the world...well, maybe not.... Everything is getting smaller! Our phones, our TV parts (flat screen), computers...as this technology gets smaller so do the parts inside get smaller! The newest microscope was unveiled last month: a $5.5 million Nion Hermes Scanning Transmission Electron Microscope that scientists are saying is one of only three in the world. It can image objects a million times smaller than a human hair. Why do we want to see things in such tiny detail? Because we have to! Keeping up with technology requires parts to become super small, even down to the size of an atom. When playing with atoms and modifying a material even by one atom or two could change its properties. Think about wonder material graphene, for instance: a 2D sheet of carbon atoms. Add another atom here or there and you've changed the material and modified what it can do. Keeping an eye on the exact structure is therefore very important. Graphene can be used to hold heat out and keep tiny electronics cool. Another 2D material, molybdenum disulphide can be used as an industrial catalyst, for example to remove sulphur from fossil fuels and make them cleaner to burn. Scientists are even looking at nanomedicine, finding a way to transport medicine using a tiny vehicle to take the medicine to the exact place in the body its needed. Electron microscopes are showing us the close ups of things that are really "far out"...
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Mrs. TaylorI love science! Everything about the world is interesting and never boring. I love to study plants, animals, insects, and people. My favorite subjects are my students who are the most unique organisms on the planet! Categories |