Question: Can you see nanoparticles in anyway if so what do they look like?

  1. A good question. I vividly remember asking my chemistry teacher something like this when I was at school. I wondered why you couldn’t just put things under a normal microscope with a huge magnification. It turns out that using light, you can’t see things smaller than its wavelength – it just goes straight through. Visible light has wavelengths in the range of 400 nm (blue) to 700 nm (red) – so you can see things that are this size or smaller with it.

    Nanoparticles are typically about 10 nm in size or so – some larger, some smaller. You can see them with various types of electron microscope – they are a lot more complicated than an optical microscope! There are some pictures of nanoparticles here:

    http://www.nanobeach.com/particle.php

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