I’m a Scientist is like school science lessons meet the X Factor! School students choose which scientist gets a prize of $1000 to communicate their work.
Scientists and students talk on this website. They both break down barriers, have fun and learn. But only the students get to vote.
This zone is the Boron Zone. It has a range of scientists studying all different topics. Who gets the prize? YOU decide!
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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