For Charles Krebs

This area is for the discussion of what's new, what's on your mind, and general photographic topics. A place to meet, make comments on this site, and get the latest community news.

Moderators: rjlittlefield, ChrisR, Chris S., Pau

Cyclops
Posts: 3084
Joined: Sat Aug 05, 2006 5:18 pm
Location: North East of England
Contact:

For Charles Krebs

Post by Cyclops »

Hi Charles,I was just perusing your website and I came across an item in Gallery 2, and I was just wondering what it is?
Is it an alga or a cilliate, or both? I notice they seem to form colonies, but not quite the same as Volvox.

http://krebsmicro.com/webgal2/File077.jpg

Excellent site by the way!
Canon 5D and 30D | Canon IXUS 265HS | Cosina 100mm f3.5 macro | EF 75-300 f4.5-5.6 USM III | EF 50 f1.8 II | Slik 88 tripod | Apex Practicioner monocular microscope

Charles Krebs
Posts: 5865
Joined: Tue Aug 01, 2006 8:02 pm
Location: Issaquah, WA USA
Contact:

Post by Charles Krebs »

Larry,

It's a Synura colony. This page has some pretty good info.

http://silicasecchidisk.conncoll.edu/Lu ... _Main.html

Cyclops
Posts: 3084
Joined: Sat Aug 05, 2006 5:18 pm
Location: North East of England
Contact:

Post by Cyclops »

Thanks Charles.
Some neat pics on that site, but what really amazed me were the pics taken with a SEM. How on earth do they coat something so small with gold!
:-k
Canon 5D and 30D | Canon IXUS 265HS | Cosina 100mm f3.5 macro | EF 75-300 f4.5-5.6 USM III | EF 50 f1.8 II | Slik 88 tripod | Apex Practicioner monocular microscope

rjlittlefield
Site Admin
Posts: 23561
Joined: Tue Aug 01, 2006 8:34 am
Location: Richland, Washington State, USA
Contact:

Post by rjlittlefield »

Cyclops wrote:How on earth do they coat something so small with gold!
One method is a vacuum deposition process called "sputtering". See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputtering.

--Rik

Cyclops
Posts: 3084
Joined: Sat Aug 05, 2006 5:18 pm
Location: North East of England
Contact:

Post by Cyclops »

Cool,if rather heavy, stuff!
Canon 5D and 30D | Canon IXUS 265HS | Cosina 100mm f3.5 macro | EF 75-300 f4.5-5.6 USM III | EF 50 f1.8 II | Slik 88 tripod | Apex Practicioner monocular microscope

rjlittlefield
Site Admin
Posts: 23561
Joined: Tue Aug 01, 2006 8:34 am
Location: Richland, Washington State, USA
Contact:

Post by rjlittlefield »

The newer ESEM's (Environmental Scanning Electron Microscopes) don't require coating at all, even for non-conductive specimens. See http://www.calce.umd.edu/general/Facilities/ESEM.pdf for explanation.

There are also other coating materials with advantages over gold. One interesting coating is "amorphous carbon", which is optically transparent like diamond. As with the gold, it's laid down one atom at a time using one or another thin film coating process like sputtering or chemical vapor deposition.

--Rik

Cyclops
Posts: 3084
Joined: Sat Aug 05, 2006 5:18 pm
Location: North East of England
Contact:

Post by Cyclops »

I know all too well that the limit for an optical microscope is about 2000X(mine goes to 1,250) but why is this so?
Would a higher M require too small an aperture in the objective to form an image, or would the objective need to be too close to the subject to be practical?
Canon 5D and 30D | Canon IXUS 265HS | Cosina 100mm f3.5 macro | EF 75-300 f4.5-5.6 USM III | EF 50 f1.8 II | Slik 88 tripod | Apex Practicioner monocular microscope

Charles Krebs
Posts: 5865
Joined: Tue Aug 01, 2006 8:02 pm
Location: Issaquah, WA USA
Contact:

Post by Charles Krebs »

It has to do with diffraction and the wave nature of light. I'll let Rik provide the math :wink:

Check out:
http://www.microscopyu.com/articles/for ... ution.html

rjlittlefield
Site Admin
Posts: 23561
Joined: Tue Aug 01, 2006 8:34 am
Location: Richland, Washington State, USA
Contact:

Post by rjlittlefield »

Charles Krebs wrote:I'll let Rik provide the math :wink:
There's a time for math. This isn't it. :D

Cyclops, a handy analogy is to think about determining the shape of something by feeling it with a stylus.

If the stylus has a small tip, you can detect fine detail; if the tip is large, you can't.

Using visible light is like using a stylus with a tip that's at least 0.2 micron radius, and more like 0.4 microns with most setups.

Magnify that by 1000X, and you're talking about a stylus whose tip appears to be 0.2-0.4 mm radius. That's already larger than the detail you can see by eye at normal viewing distance, so increasing the magnification any farther just gets you a bigger blur, no more detail.

Pushing the analogy even farther, using light to image a virus whose diameter is 20 nanometers = 0.020 microns, is like trying to determine the shape of someone's hand by feeling it with a beachball. You can maybe tell it's there, but the shape is a mystery.

Electron microscopes have a lot higher maximum magnification because they're effectively using a lot smaller stylus.

--Rik

Cyclops
Posts: 3084
Joined: Sat Aug 05, 2006 5:18 pm
Location: North East of England
Contact:

Post by Cyclops »

Yea I get it now. Its to do with the size of the waves of light and resolving power. Its kinda like a film camera where the film is quite grainy. If the film grains are bigger than fine detail in the object being photographed then that fine detail cannot be resolved.
Canon 5D and 30D | Canon IXUS 265HS | Cosina 100mm f3.5 macro | EF 75-300 f4.5-5.6 USM III | EF 50 f1.8 II | Slik 88 tripod | Apex Practicioner monocular microscope

Post Reply Previous topicNext topic