#electron microscope

[todays-xkcd]

After initial tests created a series of large holes in the wall of the lab, the higher-power Scanning Tunneling Tennis Ball Microscope project was quickly shut down.

Tennis Balls [Explained]

Transcript Under the Cut

[Cueball fires eight tennis ball at decreasing heights using a tennis ball machine, making four "thunk" noises. Megan is standing behind him.]

[Ten noises come from the right side of the panel.] Bonk Bonk Bonk Bonk Bonk OW! Bonk OW! Bonk Bonk

[Megan has her hand to her chin.] Megan: Ok, there's definitely a person over there. Let's do one more pass to try to measure their height.

[Caption below the panel:] Electrons are small and hard to work with, so some scientists have developed a scanning tennis ball microscope instead.

[forensicfield]

Types of Microscopes

1. Simple Microscope

2. Compound Microscope

3. Phase Contrast Microscope

4. Fluorescence Microscope

5. Electron Microscope

6. Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM)

7. Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM)

8. Dark Field Microscope

9. Dissecting Microscope (Stereo Microscope)

10. Digital Microscope

11. Scanning Probe Microscope (SPM)

12. Atomic Force Microscope (ATM)

13. Inverted Microscope

14. Acoustic Microscope

15. X-Ray Microscope

16. Polarizing Microscope

17. Metallurgical Microscope

18. Pocket Microscope

19. USB Microscope

20. Confocal Microscope

21. Laser Scanning Microscope

22. Differential Interference Contrast Microscope (DIC)

23. Near-field Scanning Optical Microscope (NSOM)

24. Raman Microscope

25. Super-resolution Microscope

26. Cryo-electron Microscope

27. Time-lapse Microscope

There is a wide range of microscopy techniques and instruments used in various fields of science and research.

[futurebird]

Colorizing Electron Microscope Photos Deceptively/Incorrectly

Some 'science' photo libraries are…questionable.

This photo claims to be "Ant carrying aphid egg, SEM" colorized to highlight the "egg" but look closely!

It's NOT an egg. That's just part of the ant's mouth! To understand what's wrong, take a look at the second set of photos by Hugo Darras. You can see the "egg" is part of her maxillae, the part she uses to collect liquid.

How did they decide it was an aphid egg?

Most aphids don't even lay eggs...they give live birth!

[bpod-bpod]

Bush Telegraphy

Analysing and modelling cells of the brain's cochlear nuclei called globular bushy cells using volume electron microscopy to better understand how sound is perceived

Read the published research paper here

Image from work by George A Spirou and Paul B Manis, and colleagues

Department of Medical Engineering, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL and Department of Otolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in eLife, June 2023

You can also follow BPoD on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook

[katiajewelbox]

Kiss Kiss! This is what some pollen grains look like under the scanning electron microscope. The exact species wasn't listed in the original post but many plants, ranging from lilies to redbuds, that have pollen grains that look similar to this.

From Wikipedia:

Pollen is a powdery substance produced by flowers of seed plants. It consists of pollen grains (highly reduced microgametophytes), which produce male gametes (sperm cells). Pollen grains have a hard coat made of sporopollenin that protects the gametophytes during the process of their movement from the stamens to the pistil of flowering plants, or from the male cone to the female cone of gymnosperms. If pollen lands on a compatible pistil or female cone, it germinates, producing a pollen tube that transfers the sperm to the ovule containing the female gametophyte. Individual pollen grains are small enough to require magnification to see detail. The study of pollen is called palynology and is highly useful in paleoecology, paleontology, archaeology, and forensics. Pollen in plants is used for transferring haploid male genetic material from the anther of a single flower to the stigma of another in cross-pollination. In a case of self-pollination, this process takes place from the anther of a flower to the stigma of the same flower.

Source: Andrew Paul Lenonard's Instagram page

[lifeimitatesmeme]

[thursdayisbetterthanfriday]

Probing Pi 5 silicon with an Electron Microscope

The CPU die is the cathedral of the modern world. A monument to human innovation in a silicon wafer smaller than a fingernail. A marvel of advanced logic that most will never truly see or viscerally experience, but which will dictate the currents and eddies of their lives. From the clunking, juddering, behemoths of Zuse and Turing to the staggeringly small micron-level transistors of today, we have come such a long way in less than a century. It just shows the power, and creativity, of the human mind to accomplish what seems impossible.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C Clarke

[dinnickhowellslikes]

A Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) image of Pollen from a variety of common plants:

Sunflower (Helianthus annuus, small spiky sphericals, colorized pink), morning glory (Ipomoea purpurea, big sphericals with hexagonal cavities, colorized mint green), hollyhock (Sildalcea malviflora, big spiky sphericals, colorized yellow), lily (Lilium auratum, bean shaped, colorized dark green), primrose (Oenothera fruticosa, tripod shaped, colorized red) and castor bean (Ricinus communis, small smooth sphericals, colorized light green). The image is magnified some x500, so the bean shaped grain in the bottom left corner is about 50 μm long.

[thejaymo]

Cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy (TEM) of a 3-nm UTB MOSFET.

[zipper-neck]

This is COOL

[bakingmakingmachine]

An SEM image of a guitar string held down with carbon tape to a sample mount.

[shannonsketches]

ship prompted and it’s a smash bros related one. Ganondorf X Sephiroth

Nonnie what in the 2006 Fan Fiction Dot Net did you invoke here

[vpofcookies]

I got to use so much science equipment this week and it's kinda nice to remember that there's some extremely wild futuristic equipment in this world. Like, all of our dreaming about the future has tangible impacts and we're using them to keep learning and that's awesome

Also one of the machines beeps like r2d2 and it's very satisfying and makes me feel like I'm going to turn around and be in a sci-fi movie

[pinkrose05]

Uh, Moze? Ren is calling; I think he wants his name back