Nanobot Adventures!
Feb. 25th, 2004 07:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
morslaWell, not quite the molecular "nano" scale, but fun nonetheless. I spent all day today playing with an electron microscope, taking really, really small photos for my thesis. I've never looked at something under 3000x magnification before.
True, I sat in the Earth Science basement for hours, and the only sign of the outside world was the occasional flicker of light through a gap in the cardboard (taped up to block the windows...). Sure, I only ran out of the building for a ten minute lunchbreak, to make the most of my precious hours using the machine. But I'm hooked - this stuff is fun ;-)
At the lowest magnification (about 20x) most of the diamonds look suspiciously like asteroids, suspended on their black background. The larger specimens look like shots from the Voyager probe, of moons and planets far out on the rim of the system. It's easy to lose track of what scale you're looking at - nobody makes lenscaps small enough to include in the photo...
Zooming in, and sharpening up the focus, I went exploring ravines and pits. A few discrete crystals come into view, reminding me that I'm not looking at a landscape, but the majority of the "messy" stuff (clay, dissolved garnets, etc) looks for all the world like hills and boulders. Most of this will be discarded, or examined after the specimens are broken up - so I pick a crystal face and take a closer look.
Zooming in again, everything changes. The image dissolves into static, and as I adjust the focus, sharp geometry assembles itself out of the black and white on the screen. Row after row of parallel lines; triangles; squares. Shapes within other shapes. Inverted triangles, encompassing others. Set into the surface are perfect pyramidal holes, where other crystals may have grown. The closer you look, the more detail you see, until the instruments strain to focus the image.
Next time, I have another plan. Peering at flickering static, searching for ways to unravel the images hidden in it is fun, but I think it needs some music... and I have just the music for it. Why just stare at white noise on a screen, when you could be filling your ears with electronic mayhem at the same time? Germany produces good laboratory equipment, and good music - quite possibly constructed from the same materials...
True, I sat in the Earth Science basement for hours, and the only sign of the outside world was the occasional flicker of light through a gap in the cardboard (taped up to block the windows...). Sure, I only ran out of the building for a ten minute lunchbreak, to make the most of my precious hours using the machine. But I'm hooked - this stuff is fun ;-)
At the lowest magnification (about 20x) most of the diamonds look suspiciously like asteroids, suspended on their black background. The larger specimens look like shots from the Voyager probe, of moons and planets far out on the rim of the system. It's easy to lose track of what scale you're looking at - nobody makes lenscaps small enough to include in the photo...
Zooming in, and sharpening up the focus, I went exploring ravines and pits. A few discrete crystals come into view, reminding me that I'm not looking at a landscape, but the majority of the "messy" stuff (clay, dissolved garnets, etc) looks for all the world like hills and boulders. Most of this will be discarded, or examined after the specimens are broken up - so I pick a crystal face and take a closer look.
Zooming in again, everything changes. The image dissolves into static, and as I adjust the focus, sharp geometry assembles itself out of the black and white on the screen. Row after row of parallel lines; triangles; squares. Shapes within other shapes. Inverted triangles, encompassing others. Set into the surface are perfect pyramidal holes, where other crystals may have grown. The closer you look, the more detail you see, until the instruments strain to focus the image.
Next time, I have another plan. Peering at flickering static, searching for ways to unravel the images hidden in it is fun, but I think it needs some music... and I have just the music for it. Why just stare at white noise on a screen, when you could be filling your ears with electronic mayhem at the same time? Germany produces good laboratory equipment, and good music - quite possibly constructed from the same materials...
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Date: 2004-02-25 08:56 am (UTC)I'll see what I can do...