The Microscope That Can Actually See Atoms
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- Опубліковано 4 вер 2024
- Most people know that you can't see atoms... or can you? With this special microscope, scientists actually can! In the late 1970s, two physicists in Switzerland set out to invent a new type of microscope using quantum physics that would allow them to do something no one had ever done before: see the individual atoms in a sheet of metal. Join Olivia Gordon for a peek into the tiny world of atoms in this fun new episode of SciShow!
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Sources:
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"Its not rocket science"
Yeah its quantum physics mom
"Dammit, Smithers, this isn't rocket science, it's brain surgery! Now hand me that ice cream scoop!"
Also, this guy: www.scp-wiki.net/scp-890
@@sdfkjgh Unfortunately, I think most people have never seen brain surgery and how imprecise it sometimes is: "let's scoop this out and hope for the best"
@@lollsazz:"Hey, Bubba, lookit whahappans when I touch this wiggly bit ritcheer..."
It's only Rocket Surgery. How hard could it be?
An episode on microscopes! As a materials scientist, I’m happy to see how many people are excited about this. I have used electron microscopes, atomic force microscopes and scanning tunneling microscopes before, and I can confirm they are as cool as Olivia made them sound :)
Will be rad to see when graphene and all the 2d materials come our world...
I do have one question; how do you control the distance from the sample? I assume you need to get close, but contact would damage things?
Justin Gould yes you distance from the sample is important. There are a few modes of rastering, e.g. probe maintaining constant distance (but this will cause the probe to hit especially rough samples), or maintaining constant potential, etc. The surface roughness of a sample is very important and usually the probe tips need to be replaced every few readings to maintain a sufficiently sharp tip for better image resolution.
Matt Horwich yes! 2d materials are not my field of specialty, but they are very very cool. It’s interesting how other fields of materials can be so related to seemingly unrelated things (e.g. nanomaterials for drug delivery, ceramics for stronger fibres, and futuristic applications of graphene all use the same interfacial science!)
@@jessicatjandra5815 nice! The smart materials are really exciting as well...seeing how they can be applied to the medical field, architecture and robotics, and aerospace!
I have wanted to know these things since I learned what a microscope was, and no one could ever explain it so I could understand. You just did. Thank you for answering a 30 year old question for me!
Just Google something the next time you have a question. 30 years?
@@tlehman0001 "no one could understand it so i could understand"
Hey thanks for making me feel stupid though. I really needed that this morning.
Just some advice for the future. So you don't go so long wondering something.
@@amarine1472 there is a ton of lay information on STM. Its been around for 40 years and has produced amazing images. I'm just saying, if you are curious about something, do a little research and most anything is on the internet. You will have satisfied that curiosity and will lead you to crave more.
Atoms "you can't see me"
Scientist in background "for now "
Atoms = John Cena
Evil laughter ensues, and a thunderstorm is raging in the background.
This made me remember "A Boy and His Atom" the movie IBM made with a scanning tunneling microscope.
@dontknow Why?
@dontknow Not sure how serious you are but, these tools exist and have existed for quite a while now. In fact, there exists more that one method to move single atoms at a time. Such small nano-scale movements are easily achievable using piezoelectric crystals, in this case, used either for controlling the movement of the sample or the moving sensing tip by down to sub-nanometre movements when needed.
just for anyone who might read @dontknow comments. He is wrong, that was not a prank, atoms can be moved individually. Feel free to check it on google, snopes, wikipedia, etc. @dontknow is either delusional. or a troll.
@dontknow the internet is filled with evidence that IBM is not lying about "a boy and his atom". I am not going to fall for a troll. Anyone can google scholar "a boy and his atom". You are the one who needs to bring evidence that is contrary to current scientific agreement.
@dontknow then you assume that quantum computer was fake then
I've had the chance to work with TEM's that could see the individual planes of atoms on surfaces and it's incredibly insane the how far imaging has come and the kinds of things you can see
@Private Property Maybe you could help me understand what they even are, I googled it and read a little on them. Most of what we looked at were semiconductors and nanoparticles so they were very clean to start with and wouldn't have much on them
This is one of the best SciShow episodes
I was thinking the same. I smashed that like button with a satisfied smile on my face.
Now I want to know more.
I agree completely. It was completely new to me and I found it exhilarating.
I agree! People who work on this video did a great job.
I agree
How does a penny look under a microscope?
Magnificent.
Lincoln's eyes follow you.
_Slow clap_
Clever........look at you, always thinkin.
@᪶ ᪶ i'm confused
@᪶ ᪶ ooooo ty ty
The real question is how do they move the needle in such a fine resolution to find individual atoms? What does that machinery look like?
A "screw within a screw" gets you a micrometer... so scale that up as far as it takes to gain another 10,000 orders of magnitude to get down to angstroms.
Piezoelectric actuators. By applying a large voltage across certain materials/crystals, you can get them to expand by very small amounts. The biggest issue with this is that they have a nonlinear response, meaning that you apply 100V, it might move 10 nm, but if you apply 150V it might move 20 nm. To account for this a feedback loop is used, in this case it is usually based on the tip-sample current, and for the x an y they use linear variable differential transformers which can measure very small distances for the feedback loop.
Source: Im a condensed matter physicist who uses atomic force microscopes and scanning tunnelling microscopes almost daily.
Joseph Albro that’s incredible!
@@miskers12 Thank you for that great explanation. I'm a mechanical engineer so I was skeptical it could be done mechanically in any way at all. The piezoelectric actuators make a lot more sense. They have very limited range, but if you are measuring atoms, I suppose they have a massive range.
Probably a lot like a lot of gear reductions. Scanning one atom probably took days maybe longer
About electrons having a "certain probability of being somewhere at a given time" - This will sound familiar if you have ever tried to get a drummer to show up for a gig.
Remember IBM's movie A Boy and His Atom?
Amazing how far we have pushed this mammal brain of ours, from being on trees and banging rocks, to landing on the moon and being able to see individual atoms, just amazing.
And then, we have the flat earthers and other science deniers *sigh*
I only recently learned about STMs in my microbiology class. I literally gasped when my professor showed an image of a piece of DNA with helicase and polymerase working to replicate it.
Me: Holy cow! I'm going to see what a friggin' ATOM looks like under a microscope!!
SciShow: Here's a picture of some yellow stripes with a honeycomb-looking pattern.
It is a contrast scale from 0 to 1, basically a black and white image but yes, that is how atoms look like
I have used this type of microscope before. This is just what the images look like.
SciShow would suit perfectly as a podcast. They barely show any pics or videos.
logan nasty they have one, it’s called sci show tangents
atoms don't "look" like anything. To photons they are mostly empty space honestly.
Microscope: Where are you Electron?
Electron: I'm wherever I need to be.
I'm statistically where I need to be.
“just the tip”
And only for a minute.....
sharpened... oh, ouch.
Just wanted to make sure this blue collared humor was represented somewhere in this comment section. This will suffice. :D
keep your stick on the ice
Olivia has really grown on me. I don't want anybody else delivering my science news now.
Sci Show just keeps getting better year by year!
IBM has a video showing off this cool technology in a video called "A Boy and His Atom: The Worlds Smallest Movie". As far as I am aware, they used the microscope to pick up and move individual atoms to make a short stop motion animation. You can even see the EM waves picked up from high concentrations of atoms!
Here's a link to the video: ua-cam.com/video/oSCX78-8-q0/v-deo.html
Dayum, you beat me to it. This was _literally_ the first thing that occurred to me when I read the title. Awesome IBM video, innit?
Does anyone have a link to the video mentioned at the end of the researchers seeing blood clotting using an STM? I would love to see that.
I'm chomping at the bit to see that! I'll let you know if I find anything.
ua-cam.com/video/dQw4w9WgXcQ/v-deo.html
@@zal2448 i have memorised the id. You cannot defeat me
Three years.
These scientists took on a task that had been considered impossible just a couple decades prior, using several different complicated results in high-level branches of science to achieve it.
And it took them only 3 years.
Well technically were 10000 years into recorded history. All things are predicated. And yes thats an eye roll inducing statement but its true
I work in an STM lab, its cool seeing this in a SciShow episode
That’s a pretty boss way to craft an instrument.
Olivia Gordon, you present an exemplary talk. easy to understand and continuity i rarely encounter. i learned today. thank you.
Ok, this perfectly explains why I belive what scientists tell me... because they make stuff that actually work! And reveal new things nobody had any idea about before.
💯❤️
I am still amazed how they handle vibration ..I have worked on vibration removal on ultramicro weighing machine even a footstep 10 meter away vibrate the reading here they are talking about an atom tick!!
So two corrections. 1) The vast majority of electron microscopes use back scattered electrons not transmission electrons to image. 2) The team at IBM used an atomic force microscope AFM not an STM to manipulate their gold atoms.
Olivia's enthusiasm is more infectious than COVID-19! Great video as always :)
wow this comment has. aged for sure xD
She's adorable
I'm shocked you didn't mention IBM's "A Boy and His Atom".
She looks like Amy from ''The Big Bang Theory''
I can't believe that actually worked. Science never ceases to amaze.
Could you do a video on faraday cages? How they work and stuff
This blow my mind. To be able to make a needle so sharp you can poke at atoms, hot damn
This is science on LSD! Amazing episode, team! Thanks!!!
I've looked at atoms
from both sides now
from up and down
but still somehow
I really don't know atoms
at all
Scientific journalism like this is incredibly difficult and amazing. You guys take a hell of a chance by stepping into these fields and condense the information so practically.
"The roadtrip to the destination is far more amazing than the destination itself"
3:37 I regularly perform a somewhat similar process with my teeth and a piece of spaghetti, because I like to sharpen spaghetti.
Saw Oxford Instruments on one of those! Nice!
This video is super I can feel my head ballooning with knowledge
This is something that I've wanted to know since I first read about atoms. How atoms look, how we could see them.
That was an amazing episode!
Fascinating!
My favorite SciShow episode ever. Thanks!! I wanna see the video of this 9:06 !!!
From someone working on an STM: thank you for explaining that to the public. :)
So that's how "A Boy and His Atom" was made!
This sounds like every scientists dream. A perfect harmony of physics and chemistry.
But chemistry IS physic, interractions between atoms.))
I feel like this is underrepesenting the effort and number of people necessary to make this happen XD
Great video, I would have loved more pics or videos showing the microscope images.
I'm not sure it was ment to be funny but the dead pan "electronics are not one atom thick” gave me a great laugh
This blew my mind and it freaks me out
The description filled in a shitload of blanks! Thanks for this. I always wondered how they sharpened the stylus but I was too lazy to look it up.
Time between two sentences are too short and makes me loose interest in this video, though the subject is really interesting.
How bad is your add
You are more interested in the timing between two sentences than a telescope that can see atom…
You have an exceptional ability to notice extremely small details… perhaps it would be much better to use that ability on something more useful than the timing between sentences…
Lose*
@@tonamg53 That was a constructive feedback and not some trolling or personal attack. If you can't handle that then I wish you good luck. Have a nice day.
@@AnilBharadia and I gave you a constructive feedback.
I got it, i got it, Focus. Finally Somebody ho takes Quantum mechanic seriously .Very Good.this is where super diamonds come in.
SciShow = Essential workers
No. As an actual Electron Microscopist I can absolutely tell you that a single atom has never been imaged!
We have one of these at work! I still find really cool.
amazing full video played so much infornation thumbs up keep up the good work ...exellent video
Quantum tunnelling is not electrons jumping from one place to another. Quantum tunnelling occurs when _any subatomic particle_ escapes through a barrier (whereas in classical mechanics this process would be impossible).
The ingenuity is mind-boggling.
If this doesn't forever prove that "JUST THE TIP" sooo does count, I dunno what will❗
omfg this is the longest tutorial i didn't ask for ever
Cool topic, but the editing on this video is really weird. It sounds like every sentence was recorded separately and then glued together. Very distracting. 🤷♀️
So photos of atoms look fuzzy and non distinct because atoms are fuzzy and non distinct?
Yeah, pretty much.
Really interesting and well explained (I think) but the incessant upspeak drives me crazy! I wish I but I just cany blank it out
"Monomolecular edge / Translation / Cool Sword"
YasirRiot definitely fantasy/sci fi. Crafting a blade with a liquid dissolving agent and focused electricity, so thin it can slice off atoms
@@nicbell8090 reference is from Zer0 in Borderlands 3 btw
Hey, it's that quiet girl that you graduated highschool with! Glad to see she's doing well
This answers the supernova question with a single atom .Thanks for this video.
That was interesting. I liked this video.
this is genius, this is probably the easiest to picture explanation of electrons as a "cloud". brilliant.
I love it when Amy Farah Fowler explains it so beautifully
3:33 that's amazing
I helped build an AFM from plans as a PHD project back in the 1990s. Was painstaking work, to be sure, but very satisfying when we started getting the first results.
Great episode! I just realized I've never actually seen a picture of an electron microscope. I've seen images produced by them of course but nobody ever shows the microscope. And I never thought to look it up
You are glowing today.
Have you been creating things?
Is this the best person you have to host the videos?... im super interested in this stuff and I about fell asleep 3 times.
When I think of a mad scientist experiment, this is exactly what I think of.
"Making the tip was only half the battle."
Who else is super disappointed she didn't say that making the tip was only the tip of the iceberg?
This is amazing and so cool! They knew how to keep something from being disturbed by small vibrations years before L.I.G.O. was built. Good to know. The precision is incredible!
Ok so basically, you used a tiny needle to use quantum radar to make a 3D map of a sheet of metal while flipping off Newton. COOL!
"has a certain probability of being somewhere at a given time" is also the tracking information provided by UPS
Love this video. Great topic. Great delivery
7:07 So gold; like many things, is a lot prettier if you don't look at it *too* closely.
Interesting and informative. I have experience with electron microscopes so I wonder what preparation you have to do on whatever you will be observing with the stm.
4:39 seems like the magnetic coupling would still introduce any vibrations from one to the other unless the outer magnets are essentially noise-cancelling electromagnets which I doubt they were at that time period, so, they still had noise in their experiments despite the levitation gimmick.
I was a little confused about that as well. The most common way of fine vibration isolation for these things is to use eddy current damping, involving hanging the system on springs, right above some magnets. You float them over magnets, but you don't float them using magnets.
The initial idea was to use the levitated object's inertia to dampen it's movement, in much the same way a car moving quickly over a bumpy road gives a smoother ride than one driving slowly as it doesn't have time to respond to every pothole. The apparatus will lag behind he magnet's vibrations and when designed correctly the most troublesome vibrations can be heavily dampened.
@@garethdean6382 and @lilArrin, great responses, thank yous
I recall when those first atoms were imaged and when IBM first spelled their name in atoms (nickel?), but I never did look up how the technology worked. Fascinating!
Excellent presentation. It hard to believe humanity has found a way to see something that small. Next we need to develop a device that can hear the atom.
One of the best videos I have ever watched.
I worked with an STM in graduate school and was able to get molecular resolution of several different thiol terminated carbon chains self assembled monolayers on Au(111) facets. It's funny they used magnets to levitate their apparatus our much poorer group used a patio stone and bungee cords attached to a photography tripod, however it still worked. When I first started we were on the 6th floor of a building and occasionally you could get artifacts in your images from people talking or closing a door to hard. Later we moved to the ground floor and then we would occasionally get artifacts from heavy trucks driving past the building. All in all the bungee cords worked surprisingly well considering. I did some experiments where I would back the tip a couple microns from the surface and then pull flush the sample and put in a different "ink" in order to do nanolithography. It was nerve wracking because a small bump of the sample and I would never find the place where I first "wrote" and I could crash the tip as well ruining the sample and tip. Thankfully it worked out.
This is the best explanation and certainly is one of the best videos from SciShow!
OMG ! this is an excellent explanation, thank you for making this video :DD
Those two physicists were really smart and must have had tons of funding to proceed with their concepts - as it evolved. Great job though.
We used a patio block suspended from a tripod with bungy cords as our vibration isolation device and amazingly enough it works really well.
This is how research groups who are lead by Advisors who aren't good at grant writing collect data. Those that are use the super awesome stuff that people like me wish we had. We wrote a grant one time trying to get the money to purchase a new Conductive Probe AFM which had a TUNA system which was for interrogating surfaces with ultra low currents, at least at that time they were, in the femtoamp range. We used 10 picoamps as a tunneling current when scanning with the STM because we were scanning over a conductive self assembled monolayer and that current range was calculated at the time to be just outside of the monolayer. I would quite literally run an STM all day for free. I really enjoyed the research part of grad school.
They made a picture of the picture of the picture.
The final product has nothing to do with the atom they want to see.
Fun fact, quantum tunneling is the current biggest bottleneck for better computer chips
The host seems to be in a good mood. She's smiling a bit more 👍
Yeah she's blossoming like a chrysanthemum
4:31 Gave me a damn heart attack, wearing some decent head phones and it made me think someone broke in 🤣
A brilliant example of science. Thank You.
Gerd Binnig not satisfied with inventing a single instrument also invented with the help of Calvin Quate the Atomic Force Microscope. He received the Nobel prize in 1986 along with Heinrich Rohrer for the invention of the STM. He invented the AFM in 1985 and himself Christoph Gerber and Calvin Quate used it to develop a way of interrogating insulating surfaces which is a limitation of the STM in that it requires an electrically conductive surface.
You should do a video on atomic force microscopy!
We can "See" Atoms much like a blind person "See's" Braille..In other words, we are trained to interpret that which is Completely unknown to us and thus are simply feeling around and doing the best we can to describe what we "See".
Combining various scientific specialities is what a scientist is supposed to do, or gather a group.