Visible Invisibility

Wednesday, 23rd October 2024 at 10:20am

Making the invisable visable!

GBHS's young student scientists delved into the microscopic (hairy) eye of a moth, gasped at pyramid structures in diamond and oohed and ahhed over the intensely magnified sight of a human hair - thanks to a very informative demonstration of the University of Waikato's SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope).

SEM helps to reveal the external morphology (texture), chemical composition, crystalline structure and orientation of materials within an observed object with a magnification range from 10x to 400,000x.

While optical microscopes use visible light and lenses, SEMs use a focused electron beam and high-energy electrons, providing far greater magnifying powers to provide information on a much greater scientific scale.