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New Electron Microscope Shows Atoms in Color
Cornell's Duffield Hall has acquired a new electron microscope that is enabling scientists to see individual atoms in color for the very first time. While old electron microscopes can be compared to black and white cameras, this new scanning transmission electron microscope uses a new aberration-correction technology that is both more intense and allows for faster imaging speed. "The method also can show how atoms are bonded to one another in a crystal, because the bonding creates small shifts in the energy signatures. In earlier STEMs, many electrons from the beam, including those with changed energies, were scattered at wide angles by simple collisions with atoms. The new STEM includes magnetic lenses that collect emerging electrons over a wider angle. Previously, Silcox said, about 8 percent of the emerging electrons were collected, but the new detector collects about 80 percent, allowing more accurate readings of the small changes in energy levels that reveal bonding between atoms."
These atoms are color coded, not *seen* in color by the microscope.
The summary didn't say, but the colors MUST be false color, since atoms are smaller than light wavelengths. But will it allow you to photograph atoms without destroying them? (yes the link is humorous, but the question I ask is serious)
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
So we'll finally know for certain that carbon is black, oxygen is red, nitrogen is blue, and hydrogen atoms really are white.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
At least not how they are implying. Color as most people think of it has to do with absorbed, reflected and transmitted light. The arrangement of the atoms as much as the atoms themselves affect color. But individual atoms in a crystal don't have color, at least as most people understand. The headline makes it seems like you could come away saying, "So iron atoms really are red..." or something equivalently silly.
After all, an atom is smaller than a wavelength of visible light, so atoms are quite literally colorless.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
Picture here.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Most of the space occupied by the atom is exactly that, space, nothing more. The electron cloud is a fuzzy region of probability, not a solid thing. The "side" of an atom must be defined by a force, not a particle?
Get off my virtual lawn, you damned virtual kids!
I'd like to see these atoms rendered in necessarily false color (they're smaller than visible light wavelengths) that is at least the color corresponding to their size. They're smaller than visible wavelengths, but their actual size is a specific fraction of a visible wavelength. Let's see the atoms colored with the color that's a harmonic multiple.
Or maybe the color should be derived from the "texture" of the atom, just like the actual color of macroscopic materials. If a carbon atom has 12 electrons evenly distributed around a sphere in shells (2, 8 and another 2 in valence), let's see it get colored accordingly. Maybe the inner shell's diameter harmonic color in the visible range, divided by 2 and scaled back into the visible, overlapped with the same algorithm for the outer 8 in the second shell, then again for the 2 in the outermost shell.
The point is that these colors can mean something. And since the number and combination of electrons is so important to the characteristics of the electron, as well as offering the femtoscopic equivalent to macroscopic colored surfaces, I'd like to finally see what I've been imagining since high school chemistry class.
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make install -not war
Screenshot:
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The color is based on the energy of the electrons, just like photon "color" is based on the energy of individual photons. The microscope is "color" because it can record the energy of the electrons as well as their density. Thus it is "color" just as much as your eyes - which measure photon energy (cone cells of 2 to 3 or in some cases 4 types) as well as photon density (rod cells). Note that your cone cells require more light to get a color signal. In dim light, you see black and white via your rod cells only - the situation with earlier electron microscopes. By increasing the electron capture 10 fold, true electron color vision is enabled.