Scientific American writes New Microscope Reveals the Shape of Atoms
"Chemistry textbooks typically include illustrations of atoms, but with caveats. The drawings depict atomic nuclei surrounded by electron orbitals—fuzzy spheres, barbells, tripods, and so on—but those figures represent the probability of finding an electron at a certain place around the nucleus rather than an actual “shape.” Researchers have now managed to image the electron orbitals and show for the first time that, in a sense, atoms really look like those textbook images."
"The researchers fashioned a chain of carbon atoms, dangled it from a graphite tip, and then placed it in front of a detection screen. When they applied an electric field of thousands of volts between the graphite and the screen, electrons flowed one by one through the graphite and along the carbon chain, until the electric field pulled them off the last atom in the chain. From the places where the electrons landed on the screen, the investigators could trace back the points where they left their orbital on the last atom. The ‘denser’ parts of the probability clouds had a higher chance of emitting an electron, and the information from many electrons combined into an image of the clouds. ‘We really have an image of single atoms,’ Mikhailovskij says."
1 comment:
Yet another first image of an atom or molecule. I remember first is was X-ray crystalography, then electron microscopes, then atomic force microscopy and scanning tunnel microscopy and their kin. If you like this can be called another "first" in a long line of them. I try not to shine electrons into my eyes anyway, I don't like the shocking effect.
After that complaining, I did still go look at the article and the pictures. Yep, they look like the orbitals from my textbook. I like how science works.
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