General / Off-Topic Picture of a single Atom

[Gortron]

Check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field-emission_microscopy . The German page has a few more pictures how that beast actually looks like - and how old that one is. Over here, such a tube is (or at least was) standard equipment for a high shool (Gymnasium) physics lab. It'll only show the structure of a crystal (i.e. the tip of the electrode) at atomic (or close to) resolution.

"Real" atomic resolution came up with the various types of essentially mechanical raster microscopy - scanning probe microscopy. Rather like reading braille - you run a tip over a surface and detect the "roughness" (which might be expressed as electrical current as in the raster tunnel microscope or, later on, even as mechanical force in the raster force microscope). I can remember this picture going around the world when I was a student: https://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/vintage/vintage_4506VV1003.html

Of course, "see" is a bit far fetched here, as you're not dealing with any form of light. Any "light" that could work on this kind of scale would basically destroy the stuff it was sent to illuminate. As e.g. in the XFEL facility, which works with X-rays to probe molecular structures.

If I'm honest I'm at the limit of my intellectual capacity when I talk about this stuff but I do have very strong understanding of particle physics. My specalisit supject isn't taking pictures of atoms..... which I considered impossible [noob]

 

[Morbad]

"Real" atomic resolution came up with the various types of essentially mechanical raster microscopy - scanning probe microscopy. Rather like reading braille - you run a tip over a surface and detect the "roughness" (which might be expressed as electrical current as in the raster tunnel microscope or, later on, even as mechanical force in the raster force microscope). I can remember this picture going around the world when I was a student: https://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/vintage/vintage_4506VV1003.html

My wife does a lot of work with atomic force microscopy. She's a geomicrobiologist and this method allows imaging of living cells, in situ, rather than having to use specially prepared (and usually very dead) samples for TEM. The hardware she works with doesn't quite have atomic scale resolutions, but it's about the best you can get in something you can carry out into the field with you: https://www.nanoscience.com/products/afm/traxafm/ .

Of course, "see" is a bit far fetched here, as you're not dealing with any form of light.

The whole point of these tools is to exceed the limitations of our own senses and our previous tools to get an accurate representation of objects that would otherwise be beyond our perception.

We may need to translate the data, but 'see' is still apt.