WIP video about Seeing Atoms - Kindly Requesting Feedback
Added 2025-02-03 11:56:50 +0000 UTCComing soon: a video all about seeing atoms and the journey of electron microscopes!
We'd love to hear your feedback and suggestions as we wrap up this video.
Animations are still in progress and pictures are used in place of videos at times.
Is there anything wrong? Any other questions? Anything more you'd like to see? Explanations you think don't do a good enough job or lack depth? Let us know!
Thank you so much for your time and help!
-Team Ve
Comments
Thanks for the insights Alice! My question was really trying to be a sly way of suggesting that something like your answer be included in the actual video 😉
Kimberly Green
2025-02-04 21:49:36 +0000 UTCThey’re trying to develop higher and higher resolution microscopes, but the current highest resolution microscope has a resolution of 0.2A, which is only 1/5 the size of an atom and still orders of magnitude bigger than a proton… (Source: https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/highest-resolution-microscope) So imaging sub-atomic particles is probably decades away… The first plot here is a nice plot showing resolution in microscopes vs time: https://communities.springernature.com/posts/smaller-than-the-space-between-atoms-the-technology-behind-the-highest-resolution-microscope-image Full disclosure: I’ve worked with David Muller and his grad students, so I’m definitely biased to like his stuff more than materials from other researchers… Please do your own research!
Origami Alice Zhang
2025-02-04 21:04:50 +0000 UTCIt might be helpful to delineate the components of the “grid”, which I assume is a metal, given an apparent symmetric crystalline structure. Are we seeing the nuclei?
Sarah Savage
2025-02-04 19:45:08 +0000 UTCLove this! Very cool. I'm trying to understand the diagram with Electron as the title with a horizontal line and varying magnifications along it though (e.g. at 9:04). Should it maybe start at 1x, rather than 0x, on the left? Also, the length measure goes 200nm, 10nm, 200nm. I don't really know what that means
Stephen Woo
2025-02-04 01:38:52 +0000 UTCI can't wait until the animation for solving magnetic aberration is in the video. So good so far.
Donald J Arndt
2025-02-03 20:20:19 +0000 UTCAny research or efforts underway to directly image *sub-atomic* particles (versus indirect evidence in accelerators, cloud chambers, etc) ??
Kimberly Green
2025-02-03 17:13:03 +0000 UTCChatted with Derek a bit, there's an issue we thought the video might want to address regarding the imaging of an individual layer of atoms vs a column of atoms. The figures from papers (ones that don't look periodic) strike me more as images of an individual layer of atoms (so atoms adsorbed to some surface) whereas the pictures of atoms Derek took in the lab with the professor are columns of atoms projected into a plane.
Origami Alice Zhang
2025-02-03 15:26:53 +0000 UTCI really enjoyed the video. However, I think the statement at 13:40 about scanning probe microscopes is misleading: "...these probes weren't really seeing atoms. It was more like 'feeling' atoms." It sounds like the statement is biased by how our bodies naturally collect light (through the eyes). But of course our eyes cannot actually see the electrons from an electron microscope either. Any microscopy device is creating an image from a physical interaction with a sample--whether the probe is a photon, electron, or the tip of a scanning probe microscope. I disagree with the notion here that a scanning tunneling microscope tip is any less capable of "seeing" atoms than an electron microscope. It's just a different physical interaction--neither of which our human eyes can detect directly. I think there is instead a point to be made in this part of the video about the category and nature of samples that are accessible to electron microscopy versus scanning probe microscopy.
Josh Veazey
2025-02-03 14:07:11 +0000 UTCPerhaps a bit more background on the Lorentz z-axis force. There is a Wikipedia page on it, but if there’s a useful amount of introduction less detailed than that page, but more than is in the current video , that might be useful and convenient in understanding the lensing mechanism.
Paul Weiss
2025-02-03 13:59:58 +0000 UTCThis is amazing! Very well done! The top question I get when I teach my eighth graders what atoms are is how can we see an atom. Now I have a better resource to answer that question.
Tricia Midgley
2025-02-03 13:39:22 +0000 UTCDo not yse expressions like "3000 times smaller". Times is a multiplier. There are decimals and fractions for "smaller than..."
Gregor Shapiro
2025-02-03 13:38:31 +0000 UTCAt 17:43, Dr Urban looks worried. Is that how he was? What made his images ‘seem real?’
Gregory Laborde
2025-02-03 13:30:59 +0000 UTCThanks for sharing this incredible video about how scientists have learned to image atoms, which is just mind blowing when you contemplate how difficult this task really is. I liked how the video got right into it and then blended historical flashbacks without getting into too much detail which can easily make the mind start to wander. The animation of the coils was superb, and it educated me about how the electrons are steered downwards and focused inwards to create an image. Being a photographer, I am very familiar with spherical aberrations in camera lenses, and you did a good job of explaining how that works in lenses, which then helped to describe why it's difficult to correct with a scanning microscope. I'm sure that the animation which not shown is being constructed as we speak, but I would guess that it will match the quality and educational value of the first, so I'm looking forward to seeing it in the final video. Overall, I'd give you an A++ and would suggest a follow up video which explains what we are really seeing when we look at these incredible images. "How Atoms Hold the World Together" might be an appropriate title and don't forget to feature transparent items like glass, which beg the question "how can something made of solid atoms BE transparent?" Thanks for sharing and keep up the great work. I've been watching Veritasium since the beginning and you never disappoint.
David LaCroix
2025-02-03 13:29:04 +0000 UTCWow! I had no idea…
Gregory Laborde
2025-02-03 13:26:40 +0000 UTC
