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Natural Science Forum / Physics / Optics / March 2005electron question
Has an electron ever been veiwed under a microscope? I'm an electronics technician and when I went to school we studied the theory of electricity so I guess electricity was still a theory back then. I'm just kind of curious about electrons. Electrons move so fast that I doubt they have ever been seen but I am just wondering. > Has an electron ever been veiwed under a microscope? I'm an electronics > technician and when I went to school we studied the theory of electricity > so I guess electricity was still a theory back then. > > I'm just kind of curious about electrons. Electrons move so fast that I > doubt they have ever been seen but I am just wondering. Electrons are way to small. No microscope can see them. The smallest resolution is around 1.2 ang. for a transmitted electron microscope and thats if you are doing a resolution check. This is way bigger than an electron! Kevin Cunningham SMS >> Has an electron ever been veiwed under a microscope? I'm an electronics >> technician and when I went to school we studied the theory of electricity [quoted text clipped - 10 lines] >Kevin Cunningham >SMS It's even more messy than that. Electrons do not behave like conventional "particles", they have some of the characteristics of a particle (mass, though very small) and some of the characteristics of a wave whose wavelength varies with the electron's velocity (can show interference, make images etc.). There is no real way of defining the position of an electron at any time. Wave mechanics shows that there is a probability distribution defined by its wave function. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle shows that for such a small entity you cannot simultaneously define its position and its velocity. David  SignatureDavid Littlewood > Has an electron ever been veiwed under a microscope? I'm an electronics > technician and when I went to school we studied the theory of electricity so > I guess electricity was still a theory back then. > > I'm just kind of curious about electrons. Electrons move so fast that I > doubt they have ever been seen but I am just wondering. It all depends upon what you mean by "seen". Has anyone seen a ribosome? You can "see" what a single electron can do. Accelerate it and let it strike a nuclear particle detector to see a blip on an osciloscope. Bill It seems like an oscilloscope measures but it doesn't show an image. An electron is so small and fast that I wonder if anyone will ever know what one looks like. I don't keep up with technology much so I thought they might have seen one by now. I use my multimeter, oscilloscope and ohms law most of the time. Sometimes I use the Krautkramer and NDT ultrasonic equipment to check for flaws in metal. It's surprising how a small crack that is to small to see will show up using the NDT equipment. >> Has an electron ever been veiwed under a microscope? I'm an electronics >> technician and when I went to school we studied the theory of electricity [quoted text clipped - 10 lines] > > Bill > It seems like an oscilloscope measures but it doesn't show an image. An > electron is so small and fast that I wonder if anyone will ever know what [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > check for flaws in metal. It's surprising how a small crack that is to small > to see will show up using the NDT equipment. Aside from not knowing what a *Krautkramer* or *NDT* is, I think that you are barking up the wron tree. Just because you can generate an image, does not mean that you can use it to actually see. SAR produces images but they are not what you really see. (I am tempted not to say that SAR is an acronym for synthetic array radar.) Rutherford never obtained an image of an atomic nucleus but obtained a pretty good idea of what it looked like. If an artist friend were to paint a picture based upon that data, would that be an image? It strikes me that would be as good an image as any SAR map. Bill It seems like you took what I said the wrong way. I wasn't criticizing what you said. What you said is right. Electrons can be measured but they can't be seen (at least not as an image). Why do you say that I don't know what NDT or Krautkramer is? I've used Magnaflux, Gulton, Krautkramer, and Stavely NDT equipment to check metal for flaws. Anyone who wants to know the definition of NDT can click this link and find out: http://www.asnt.org/ndt/primer1.htm >> It seems like an oscilloscope measures but it doesn't show an image. An >> electron is so small and fast that I wonder if anyone will ever know what [quoted text clipped - 21 lines] > > Bill > Why do you say that I don't know what NDT or Krautkramer is? I've used > Magnaflux, Gulton, Krautkramer, and Stavely NDT equipment to check metal for > flaws. Anyone who wants to know the definition of NDT can click this link > and find out: http://www.asnt.org/ndt/primer1.htm Sorry anout that. I did not know what those terms were! Since then I thought "nondestructive testing" but it was not clear to ME. But I still do not know what a Krautkramer is. Bill Krautkramer or Krautkramer Branson manufactures metal flaw detectors and thickness gages. This is a good article about NDT and Krautkramer: http://www.manufacturingcenter.com/qm/archives/0400/0400mat.asp >> Why do you say that I don't know what NDT or Krautkramer is? I've used >> Magnaflux, Gulton, Krautkramer, and Stavely NDT equipment to check metal [quoted text clipped - 9 lines] > > Bill > It seems like an oscilloscope measures but it doesn't show an image. An > electron is so small and fast that I wonder if anyone will ever know what > one looks like. Thing is, they don't actually 'look', if you get my drift. They don't show up. Just imagine sort of a tiny packet of 'static electricity'. You only know it's there because of what it does to other things. An electron microscope is not very useful to "see" electrons since it uses electrons to probe the target. An STM is using electrons for probing, too, hence can measure very tiny currents caused by moving electrons, but it can't "see" them either. A femtoscope might see them, unfortunately we haven't built one yet. A nearfield optical microscope using a femto second laser pulse however can probe orbital changes and hence "see" electron orbits [1]. But at this level, quantum mechanics teaches us the "famous" Particle-Wave-Duality [2] and that the resolution to simultaneously measure time and energy (or momentum and position) is governed by Heisenberg's simple equations, known as the Heisenberg Uncertainty [3]. BTW, a great book about quantum mechanics written by Roland Omnes, The Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, Princeton Series in Physics, Princeton University Press, 1994. Gregor [1] http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/3/9/3/1 [2] http://www.tcd.ie/Physics/Schools/what/atoms/quantum/duality.html [3] http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~imamura/208/jan27/hup.html > Has an electron ever been veiwed under a microscope? I'm an electronics > technician and when I went to school we studied the theory of electricity > so I guess electricity was still a theory back then. > > I'm just kind of curious about electrons. Electrons move so fast that I > doubt they have ever been seen but I am just wondering. > Has an electron ever been veiwed under a microscope? I'm an electronics > technician and when I went to school we studied the theory of electricity so > I guess electricity was still a theory back then. > > I'm just kind of curious about electrons. Electrons move so fast that I No. Electrons are point particles (or at least no bigger than 10^-18 m in diameter, according to experiments). They cannot be resolved. they can be *detected*- there is a difference. The "theory" of electricity is not a theory in the same way people have "theories" about JFK's assassination. Here, "theory" means "a testable explanation for the observable effects of electricity". SignatureAndrew Resnick, Ph.D. Department of Physiology and Biophysics Case Western Reserve University |
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