How do we “see” and study nanoparticles in the Clark Fork River
In this case, we take the water collected in Montana, back to our labs in Virginia, where we look at the samples in a transmission electron microscope (that is, a TEM). I’m standing with the very instrument we use in the picture. It huge, with the microscope itself and necessary associated equipment taking up a large size room. It is extremely expensive to purchase (millions of dollars), and using it requires a great, great deal of expertise and training, as you can imagine. The system is so complex that it takes a great deal of knowledge just to keep it running. Yet, these remarkable instruments allow you to “see” with magnification up to a million times or so. That’s good enough to see single columns of atoms, if you can believe that. Nanoparticles may only be a few tens of atoms across, so you need an microscope of this power to see and study them. Thus, a high resolution TEM like this one becomes an essential tool.
August 10th, 2007 at 2:58 am
A most important research topic. A most imposing machine. A most distinguished professor!
It’s all very inspirational !!
August 4th, 2009 at 7:51 am
hello.
how can we understand that a nono particles that we buy is really nano?ofcourse without experince instruments such as tem and sem,i want some simple experiment to find that.
thanks
August 16th, 2009 at 5:42 am
There are light scattering techniques that can be used to detect nanoparticles, and although they cannot give get detail, these instruments are much less costly and complex than a TEM. Yet their cost is still not trivial. So unless you are a scientist who studies nanoparticles, you really have to trust what the manufacturer says about their product, or find reports about the product conducted by an independent agency (academic researchers, government agencies, etc.).