Saturday, September 15, 2012

Photographing Molecules

Back in 2009, this was the best we could do at photographing molecules.


Now, IBM scientists in Switzerland are producing molecular images like these, so detailed they show the variation in the length of different atomic bonds.
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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Can you explain, what are we actually looking at in these images? Are the blue polygons actual matter, or are they fields of some sort between particles? Are we actually yet able to photograph particles? Very curious.

September 15, 2012 at 2:42 PM
John said...

They are chemical bonds, which are electric fields. The images are made with an Atomic Force Microscope, which has a single atom tip that responds to even the tiniest electric impulses. It is interesting that although mathematically the position of an electron is a sort of cloud of probability, the paths they trace out between atoms show up very clearly in these images.

September 15, 2012 at 5:33 PM

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