Global Conflict

So I have just started a PhD in Physics and am studying a topic in an area known as Scanning Probe Microscopy.

The following image is one I took today and was taken using a Scanning Tunneling Microscope. The image shows rows of copper atoms, which is bloody insane; this is the first time I've managed atomic resolution with the microscope! Copper is quite a hard surface to image (as opposed to say Silicon) so I was really pleased with it.
The image is 3nm across (0.000000003m).

good job, i guess

PhD in physics is

Are you doing the PhD at Nottingham? I'm always watching the videos with prof. Moriarty, Merrifield and co. They are really entertaining! http://www.youtube.com/user/sixtysymbols

So what can you actually learn from this image or similar?

Could someone move this to the Tavern? It's in the wrong place I think.

mrBLUE9 wrote:Are you doing the PhD at Nottingham? I'm always watching the videos with prof. Moriarty, Merrifield and co. They are really entertaining! http://www.youtube.com/user/sixtysymbols

Yup, Prof Moriarty is actually my PhD supervisor! He's a pretty cool guy as you would imagine

RazY70 wrote:So what can you actually learn from this image or similar?

You can learn a lot about the physical and electronic properties of the surface, as well as anything that is on the surface. What I will be looking at is the electronic structure of molecules that have been placed on a similar surface.
As well as using the microscope to image surfaces, you can also use it to manipulate the surface. There is quite a lot of interest in picking up individual atoms and making structures/images out of them.

Can you turn it into gold yet?

Can you turn it into gold yet? I know they could in ye olde days, cause I read about it in a book I got from the library.

That is awesome! Mind if I share it on facebook? Some other people I know might like it as well.

Calloutman wrote: What I will be looking at is the electronic structure of molecules that have been placed on a similar surface.

Only experimental or also using computations?

some friends did compute adsorption processes on surfaces, more focused on the chemistry aspect though.

Why the hell I discover something like this 27 years after its invention? That's friggin' cool. Too bad it doesn't work on a 3-dimensional plane, or Mendel knows how cool an imaged protein could be.

BRUMMIE wrote:Can you turn it into gold yet? I know they could in ye olde days, cause I read about it in a book I got from the library.

Haha no, not yet.

ICallIDTheft wrote:That is awesome! Mind if I share it on facebook? Some other people I know might like it as well.

Go for it.

Jokerle wrote:

Calloutman wrote: What I will be looking at is the electronic structure of molecules that have been placed on a similar surface.

Only experimental or also using computations?
some friends did compute adsorption processes on surfaces, more focused on the chemistry aspect though.

I'm doing both. Hopefully what I simulate and what I scan will match up. The simulations involve quite a bit of chemistry so I'm sure there is some overlap with what your friend was doing.

BRUMMIE wrote:Can you turn it into gold yet? I know they could in ye olde days, cause I read about it in a book I got from the library.

Transmuting Copper into Gold will be essentially impossible until we invent a process where we can reliably add a specific (and large, in this case)number of protons. We've made Gold from Mercury by knocking the 1 neutron difference off and having the resulting Isotope of Mercury destabilize into Gold (losing the 1 Proton difference). Even harder is irradiating Platinum (adding 1 Proton/Neutron) in a nuclear reactor and hoping you get lucky and get Gold (and turning Platinum into Gold is crazy stupid from a rarity standpoint). Lead, the oft-referenced starting material for transmutation, would require quite a lengthy process of 'neutron therapy', and its isotopes are more likely to break down into materials unsuitable for conversion to Gold. Even if you were really lucky and somehow managed to strip Lead in the right way to end up with Gold, it would be so god damned radioactive you couldn't use it near things you preferred staying alive.

/edit

On thread topic; I wish I could play around that low. The furthest I'll ever get to go is 1,000x most likely, and it gets kind boring around there when you're looking at metals...http://imgur.com/a/iLQHn