The Microscope That Can Actually See Atoms
Рет қаралды 578,816
4 жыл бұрынMost 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!
SciShow has a spinoff podcast! It's called SciShow Tangents. Check it out www.scishowtangents.org
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phys.org/news/2018-07-closer-...
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@alienatedweapon5679 4 жыл бұрын
"Its not rocket science" Yeah its quantum physics mom
@sdfkjgh 4 жыл бұрын
"Dammit, Smithers, this isn't rocket science, it's brain surgery! Now hand me that ice cream scoop!"
@sdfkjgh 4 жыл бұрын
Also, this guy: www.scp-wiki.net/scp-890
@lollsazz 4 жыл бұрын
@@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"
@sdfkjgh 4 жыл бұрын
@@lollsazz:"Hey, Bubba, lookit whahappans when I touch this wiggly bit ritcheer..."
@ReverendRaff 4 жыл бұрын
It's only Rocket Surgery. How hard could it be?
@jessicatjandra5815 4 жыл бұрын
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 :)
@mattphorwich 4 жыл бұрын
Will be rad to see when graphene and all the 2d materials come our world...
@justingould2020 4 жыл бұрын
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?
@jessicatjandra5815 4 жыл бұрын
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.
@jessicatjandra5815 4 жыл бұрын
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!)
@mattphorwich 4 жыл бұрын
@@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!
@sixstix965 4 жыл бұрын
Atoms "you can't see me" Scientist in background "for now "
@martianastronaut4917 4 жыл бұрын
Atoms = John Cena
@raindropsneverfall 4 жыл бұрын
Evil laughter ensues, and a thunderstorm is raging in the background.
@tammymccaslin4787 4 жыл бұрын
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!
@tlehman0001 4 жыл бұрын
Just Google something the next time you have a question. 30 years?
@amarine1472 4 жыл бұрын
@@tlehman0001 "no one could understand it so i could understand"
@tammymccaslin4787 4 жыл бұрын
Hey thanks for making me feel stupid though. I really needed that this morning.
@tlehman0001 4 жыл бұрын
Just some advice for the future. So you don't go so long wondering something.
@tlehman0001 4 жыл бұрын
@@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.
@klutterkicker 4 жыл бұрын
This made me remember "A Boy and His Atom" the movie IBM made with a scanning tunneling microscope.
@GMC997 4 жыл бұрын
@dontknow Why?
@OfficialKrYpToNyt 4 жыл бұрын
@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.
@nydydn 4 жыл бұрын
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.
@nydydn 4 жыл бұрын
@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.
@rogueanuerz 4 жыл бұрын
@dontknow then you assume that quantum computer was fake then
@sebastianelytron8450 4 жыл бұрын
How does a penny look under a microscope? Magnificent.
@christelheadington1136 4 жыл бұрын
Lincoln's eyes follow you.
@choasbiscotti3146 4 жыл бұрын
_Slow clap_
@Tom-fh3zg 4 жыл бұрын
Clever........look at you, always thinkin.
@miscl_anon 4 жыл бұрын
@᪶ ᪶ i'm confused
@miscl_anon 4 жыл бұрын
@᪶ ᪶ ooooo ty ty
@nicholaicorbie 4 жыл бұрын
This is one of the best SciShow episodes
@anastrixnoodles 4 жыл бұрын
I was thinking the same. I smashed that like button with a satisfied smile on my face. Now I want to know more.
@annaliseoconner9266 4 жыл бұрын
I agree completely. It was completely new to me and I found it exhilarating.
@niki123489 4 жыл бұрын
I agree! People who work on this video did a great job.
@justmery6902 3 жыл бұрын
I agree
@EverythingScience 4 жыл бұрын
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
@EverythingScience 4 жыл бұрын
@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
@DavidChadwell 4 жыл бұрын
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?
@randomabidingdude 4 жыл бұрын
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.
@miskers12 4 жыл бұрын
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.
@chonchjohnch 4 жыл бұрын
Joseph Albro that’s incredible!
@DavidChadwell 4 жыл бұрын
@@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.
@skinisdelicious3365 4 жыл бұрын
Probably a lot like a lot of gear reductions. Scanning one atom probably took days maybe longer
@onlyrick 4 жыл бұрын
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.
@GoldSrc_ 4 жыл бұрын
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*
@rybohm9829 4 жыл бұрын
“just the tip”
@beefcakeandgravy 4 жыл бұрын
And only for a minute.....
@GECKman88 4 жыл бұрын
sharpened... oh, ouch.
@joegibbs1454 4 жыл бұрын
Just wanted to make sure this blue collared humor was represented somewhere in this comment section. This will suffice. :D
@dosbox907 3 жыл бұрын
keep your stick on the ice
@Danflave 4 жыл бұрын
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.
@robergarcia11 4 жыл бұрын
It is a contrast scale from 0 to 1, basically a black and white image but yes, that is how atoms look like
@xantyleger7888 4 жыл бұрын
I have used this type of microscope before. This is just what the images look like.
@logannasty3240 4 жыл бұрын
SciShow would suit perfectly as a podcast. They barely show any pics or videos.
@itsella9400 4 жыл бұрын
logan nasty they have one, it’s called sci show tangents
@forkevbot 4 жыл бұрын
atoms don't "look" like anything. To photons they are mostly empty space honestly.
@aaronmclaughlin4745 4 жыл бұрын
Microscope: Where are you Electron? Electron: I'm wherever I need to be.
@mikegLXIVMM 3 жыл бұрын
I'm statistically where I need to be.
@Artifying 4 жыл бұрын
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.
@SouthpawSesto 4 жыл бұрын
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: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/pblzi5ppkp6RoWQ.html
@avimohan6594 4 жыл бұрын
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?
@1997jankuschef 4 жыл бұрын
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.
@joshbobst1629 2 жыл бұрын
Olivia has really grown on me. I don't want anybody else delivering my science news now.
@makoyoverfelt3320 4 жыл бұрын
That’s a pretty boss way to craft an instrument.
@tobiramasenju6290 4 жыл бұрын
Sci Show just keeps getting better year by year!
@aladdin517 4 жыл бұрын
That was an amazing episode! Fascinating!
@garygenerous8982 4 жыл бұрын
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.
@anneanderson145 4 жыл бұрын
I'm chomping at the bit to see that! I'll let you know if I find anything.
@zal2448 4 жыл бұрын
kzfaq.info/get/bejne/mrenZ9pqvM28k4U.html
@rayleighslivers2187 4 жыл бұрын
@@zal2448 i have memorised the id. You cannot defeat me
@wizardoffrobozz 3 жыл бұрын
Olivia Gordon, you present an exemplary talk. easy to understand and continuity i rarely encounter. i learned today. thank you.
@SunriseFireberry 4 жыл бұрын
I've looked at atoms from both sides now from up and down but still somehow I really don't know atoms at all
@matthewfreudenrich6557 4 жыл бұрын
I work in an STM lab, its cool seeing this in a SciShow episode
@ShauriePvs 4 жыл бұрын
This is the best explanation and certainly is one of the best videos from SciShow!
@THETRIVIALTHINGS 4 жыл бұрын
This is something that I've wanted to know since I first read about atoms. How atoms look, how we could see them.
@RD-eg1df 4 жыл бұрын
This blow my mind. To be able to make a needle so sharp you can poke at atoms, hot damn
@sarupi641 4 жыл бұрын
Great video, I would have loved more pics or videos showing the microscope images.
@MrPinknumber 4 жыл бұрын
OMG ! this is an excellent explanation, thank you for making this video :DD
@anupsharma6465 4 жыл бұрын
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!!
@KCSutherland 4 жыл бұрын
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.
@Josh-qe1hw 3 жыл бұрын
Well technically were 10000 years into recorded history. All things are predicated. And yes thats an eye roll inducing statement but its true
@cgaccount3669 4 жыл бұрын
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
@aifg8064 3 жыл бұрын
amazing full video played so much infornation thumbs up keep up the good work ...exellent video
@thenekom 4 жыл бұрын
I can't believe that actually worked. Science never ceases to amaze.
@KriegZombie 4 жыл бұрын
I'm shocked you didn't mention IBM's "A Boy and His Atom".
@nordlyssrlys6945 3 жыл бұрын
"The roadtrip to the destination is far more amazing than the destination itself"
@nerfthecows 4 жыл бұрын
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
@rwmcgwier 4 жыл бұрын
This was a fabulous instructional video. I understand quantum mechanics. I can do the math behind entanglement, teleportation, etc. But I never grokked a scanning tunneling microscope until now. It is at once obvious and awe inspiring as the result most true genius is. Thank you!
@tgunderwood8399 4 жыл бұрын
Love this video. Great topic. Great delivery
@exploding_pineapples 4 жыл бұрын
So that's how "A Boy and His Atom" was made!
@bobbygilbert2706 4 жыл бұрын
This video is super I can feel my head ballooning with knowledge
@kagannasuhbeyoglu 4 жыл бұрын
Great content. Thanks a lot SciShow👍
@valyardelean 3 жыл бұрын
She looks like Amy from ''The Big Bang Theory''
@evawettergren7492 4 жыл бұрын
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.
@Pugetwitch 4 жыл бұрын
💯❤️
@Lolalogo 4 жыл бұрын
We have one of these at work! I still find really cool.
@revan6059 4 жыл бұрын
4:31 Gave me a damn heart attack, wearing some decent head phones and it made me think someone broke in 🤣
@sdfkjgh 4 жыл бұрын
3:37 I regularly perform a somewhat similar process with my teeth and a piece of spaghetti, because I like to sharpen spaghetti.
@matthewirvin6505 4 жыл бұрын
This blew my mind and it freaks me out
@LoriAW3791 4 жыл бұрын
I love SciShow! Love your curls!
@knuckleburger 4 жыл бұрын
This is science on LSD! Amazing episode, team! Thanks!!!
@BothHands1 4 жыл бұрын
i love this video!! more long interesting videos like this!!
@sinohui3 3 жыл бұрын
This is amazing. Thank you for sharing.
@benjaminverlhac3846 4 жыл бұрын
From someone working on an STM: thank you for explaining that to the public. :)
@187Bryce 4 жыл бұрын
Wow, this episode is cool!! Great job!
@nikolausdeems1922 4 жыл бұрын
Saw Oxford Instruments on one of those! Nice!
@inicolov 4 жыл бұрын
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.
@gigglysamentz2021 4 жыл бұрын
I feel like this is underrepesenting the effort and number of people necessary to make this happen XD
@objectivemillennial2117 4 жыл бұрын
omfg this is the longest tutorial i didn't ask for ever
@crisvermondcreman2894 3 жыл бұрын
This answers the supernova question with a single atom .Thanks for this video.
@Mike80528 2 жыл бұрын
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!
@garrett6064 4 жыл бұрын
7:07 So gold; like many things, is a lot prettier if you don't look at it *too* closely.
@HarryNicNicholas 3 жыл бұрын
this is genius, this is probably the easiest to picture explanation of electrons as a "cloud". brilliant.
@h7opolo 4 жыл бұрын
3:33 that's amazing
@KaCing818 4 жыл бұрын
Could you do a video on faraday cages? How they work and stuff
@FalbertForester 4 жыл бұрын
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.
@anneanderson145 4 жыл бұрын
My favorite SciShow episode ever. Thanks!! I wanna see the video of this 9:06 !!!
@davetoms1 4 жыл бұрын
Olivia's enthusiasm is more infectious than COVID-19! Great video as always :)
@marnenotmarnie259 Жыл бұрын
wow this comment has. aged for sure xD
@cthulhu4411 6 ай бұрын
She's adorable
@soupbonep 3 жыл бұрын
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!
@placebomessiah 4 жыл бұрын
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.
@dexterm2003 4 жыл бұрын
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.
@oughv Жыл бұрын
No. As an actual Electron Microscopist I can absolutely tell you that a single atom has never been imaged!
@mollago 4 жыл бұрын
Hey, it's that quiet girl that you graduated highschool with! Glad to see she's doing well
@chrisboucher1987 3 жыл бұрын
The ingenuity is mind-boggling.
@blocklearners 4 жыл бұрын
nice content and nice explained
@maysammirzakhalili4862 4 жыл бұрын
Thank you 😊. This video was amazingly fed my hunger for key information on the subject. ,✌️✌️✌️😚😚😚😌🙏🙏💖💖💖💖💖💖💖. I was in need of it.
@stomachegg041 4 жыл бұрын
SciShow = Essential workers
@samlienhard1349 3 жыл бұрын
"has a certain probability of being somewhere at a given time" is also the tracking information provided by UPS
@frank.conway 3 жыл бұрын
One of the best videos I have ever watched.
@comment.highlighted 2 жыл бұрын
That was Amazing. They developed it so quickly 🤯
@therealpunitdh 4 жыл бұрын
I love it when Amy Farah Fowler explains it so beautifully
@riverbender9898 4 жыл бұрын
A brilliant example of science. Thank You.
@jadz.nerdytransfem 4 жыл бұрын
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!
@bryanglaser88 4 жыл бұрын
I normally don’t get excited over small things, but I totally did this time.
@dinojay8410 4 жыл бұрын
STM's....the gift that keeps on giving! 😉😄👍 ... seriously, a cool development and another made possible by or through a multidisciplinary approach of sorts.
@KnighteMinistriez 4 жыл бұрын
That was interesting. I liked this video.
@AJKvideoproductions 4 жыл бұрын
This video was one of the greatest
@josealvarez2424 4 жыл бұрын
I don’t think people are recognizing how awesome it is that this was all done over 40 years ago
@ConstantChaos1 4 жыл бұрын
This is the first history lesson I loved
@Danchell 5 ай бұрын
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.
@Weirdoid 4 жыл бұрын
So photos of atoms look fuzzy and non distinct because atoms are fuzzy and non distinct?
@rsrt6910 4 жыл бұрын
Yeah, pretty much.
@MrEnjoivolcom1 3 жыл бұрын
If this doesn't forever prove that "JUST THE TIP" sooo does count, I dunno what will❗
@heynando 4 жыл бұрын
Fascinating
@TheCaladu 4 жыл бұрын
My undergraduate research was imaging neurons in which I injected dna into on a type of STM, although I mainly used AFM(next generation but problem scanning instead of quantum tunneling)
@KatyaLeonie 4 жыл бұрын
You should do a video on atomic force microscopy!
@Parents_of_Twins 4 жыл бұрын
We used a patio block suspended from a tripod with bungy cords as our vibration isolation device and amazingly enough it works really well.
@Parents_of_Twins 4 жыл бұрын
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.
@hollybee5949 4 жыл бұрын
I just submitted a project on this last week!! Where was this video when I needed you 😢
@Kittyxandra19 4 жыл бұрын
When I think of a mad scientist experiment, this is exactly what I think of.
@OmniGuy 4 жыл бұрын
I love this stuff.
@nicholaicorbie 4 жыл бұрын
This sounds like every scientists dream. A perfect harmony of physics and chemistry.
@battou2501 4 жыл бұрын
But chemistry IS physic, interractions between atoms.))