You’re looking at the first-ever picture of a hydrogen atom. Or really, it’s an image of the electron orbital “cloudy-woudy, quantumy-wantumy” … stuff. It’s not a real image, like we’re used to seeing, of course. Atoms are smaller than the wavelength of light, and you can’t see anything smaller than the wavelength of light, by definition. Here’s what you’re looking at: First of all, electrons don’t exist as the cartoonish orbiting particle-planets like we see on the Springfield Isotopes logo: Instead, they exist as a probability cloud, behaving like both waves and particles. Check out this delightfully old-school MinutePhysics video to see what I mean: If you know about things like of quantum mechanical principles like the Schrödinger equation, the Pauli Exclusion Principle and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, you know that directly observing an electron, with all of its wavy-particley dualness, is next to impossible. Instead, we describe the identity and “location” of an electron as a probability. In other words, within a certain cloud-like region around a nucleus, an electron has a certain probability of being any which where at any time. Only, if you try to directly observe it, you’re never able to nail down precisely where it is. It’s complicated, I know. Thanks to newly-developed photoionization microscopy, though, those wave patterns can now be detected! German and Dutch physicists applied laser pulses to hydrogen atoms hanging in an electric field. This excited the hydrogen’s lone electron into various ring-like energy states, and then some of them were flung out to a detector. After observing lots and lots of these, and adding and subtracting all the interfering waves, they were able to reconstruct the probability cloud pattern for every place (and time) that a hydrogen’s electron can be. If you like that, then you should definitely check out the world’s smallest movie, drawn with individual atoms by IBM. Wave patterns galore!! If you’d like to dig deeper into the physics of this hydrogen atom observation, head over to PhysicsWorld.
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You’re looking at the first-ever picture of a hydrogen atom. Or really, it’s an image of the electron orbital “cloudy-woudy, quantumy-wantumy” … stuff. It’s not a real image, like we’re used to seeing, of course. Atoms are smaller than the wavelength of light, and you can’t see anything smaller than the wavelength of light, by definition.

Here’s what you’re looking at: First of all, electrons don’t exist as the cartoonish orbiting particle-planets like we see on the Springfield Isotopes logo:

Instead, they exist as a probability cloud, behaving like both waves and particles. Check out this delightfully old-school MinutePhysics video to see what I mean:

If you know about things like of quantum mechanical principles like the Schrödinger equation, the Pauli Exclusion Principle and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, you know that directly observing an electron, with all of its wavy-particley dualness, is next to impossible. Instead, we describe the identity and “location” of an electron as a probability. In other words, within a certain cloud-like region around a nucleus, an electron has a certain probability of being any which where at any time. Only, if you try to directly observe it, you’re never able to nail down precisely where it is. It’s complicated, I know.

Thanks to newly-developed photoionization microscopy, though, those wave patterns can now be detected! German and Dutch physicists applied laser pulses to hydrogen atoms hanging in an electric field. This excited the hydrogen’s lone electron into various ring-like energy states, and then some of them were flung out to a detector. After observing lots and lots of these, and adding and subtracting all the interfering waves, they were able to reconstruct the probability cloud pattern for every place (and time) that a hydrogen’s electron can be.

If you like that, then you should definitely check out the world’s smallest movie, drawn with individual atoms by IBM. Wave patterns galore!! If you’d like to dig deeper into the physics of this hydrogen atom observation, head over to PhysicsWorld.

A Boy And His Atom: The World’s Smallest Movie

Scientists are known for loving their work. Biologists tend to their cultures and animals. Physicists polish their exquisite machines like sports car entusiasts treat vintage Ferraris. So do chemists love atoms? Apparently they do. At least enough to write a love story with, and about them.

IBM scientists have created the world’s smallest movie using individual atoms. It’s the story of a boy and his playful atom buddy, drawn in stop motion and with each quantum pixel positioned using a scanning tunneling microscope. Every frame is magnified a stunning 100 million times!

This amazing feat was accomplished by using a charged atomic needle to drag single carbon monoxide molecules (the individual atoms we see are one side of that two-atom molecule) around on a copper substrate. I’ve posted a little bit about these feats of atomic art before, with these “quantum corrals” and “ferrous wheels”. 

See those ripples around each atom? They remind me of pebbles being tossed into a still pond. They are actually ripples in the electron field of the copper surface below! It’s a reminder that, contrary to many textbooks, electrons behave more like waves than particles following an orbit. And like any other wave, they can form intricate interference patterns. Check out this previous post for more on that.

The hope is that manipulating atomic structures like this may lead to even greater information storage capacity. Imaging all the world’s books and movies on your mobile phone at once!

Here’s a “making of” movie from IBM, featuring the sound of atoms being moved as well as the encouraging sight of several female team members.

This makes me as happy as atom boy there.

hydrogeneportfolio: Minimal Posters - Muslim Scientists Who Changed The World. Honoring the contributions of Muslim scientists from history to the modern era, with this always-awesome collection from Hydrogene.
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hydrogeneportfolio: Minimal Posters - Muslim Scientists Who Changed The World. Honoring the contributions of Muslim scientists from history to the modern era, with this always-awesome collection from Hydrogene.
Zoom Info
hydrogeneportfolio: Minimal Posters - Muslim Scientists Who Changed The World. Honoring the contributions of Muslim scientists from history to the modern era, with this always-awesome collection from Hydrogene.
Zoom Info
hydrogeneportfolio: Minimal Posters - Muslim Scientists Who Changed The World. Honoring the contributions of Muslim scientists from history to the modern era, with this always-awesome collection from Hydrogene.
Zoom Info
hydrogeneportfolio: Minimal Posters - Muslim Scientists Who Changed The World. Honoring the contributions of Muslim scientists from history to the modern era, with this always-awesome collection from Hydrogene.
Zoom Info

hydrogeneportfolio:

Minimal Posters - Muslim Scientists Who Changed The World.

Honoring the contributions of Muslim scientists from history to the modern era, with this always-awesome collection from Hydrogene.

Just How Small is an Atom?

A fantastic new video from the TEDEd project. By the way, a grapefruit is the same as an Earth filled with blueberries.

It does a fantastic job detailing the misconceptions that abound in basic science books. Atoms are hard to get your mind around, even though your mind is made of them.

Previously: I answer the question: “If atoms are mostly empty space, why don’t we fall through the floor?”

(by TEDEducation)

Source: youtube.com

The Beautifully Frightening Atom

For the night crowd.

Something about the atom rustles up both fear and amazement in me. On one hand, it’s the smallest physical manifestation of matter (almost). On the other hand, it holds within its unimaginably small substructures such immense energy - energy that can be harnessed for both good and evil.

Thoughts of atomic energy can inspire very spooky imagery. In 2003, artist Isao Hashimoto put together the above multimedia piece demonstrating the history of atomic bomb detonations from 1945-1998. The sounds and visuals combine to form a hypnotic video game that almost makes you forget how real and destructive the blasts are.

And then I came across this image of the only known nuclear detonation in space, from a 1962 test to determine if nukes could disrupt the Van Allen belts surrounding Earth:

Again, there’s a conflict in how beautiful the image looks and how utterly destructive an H-bomb is, even 250 miles above the Earth.

What about nuclear energy? Fukushima reminded us of the balance between atomic power and human utility that we too often take for granted. I came upon this artwork from Robert Cherwink, which captures both the destructive power and the risk of boiling water with atoms:

So there you have it. While we can’t see atoms, their energy can certainly inspire haunting experiences.