the.com/microscopy
Proof that the biggest problems are often too small to see with your face alone.
means The science and technique of using instruments to magnify objects too small for the naked eye to resolve.
from Built from Greek 'mikros' (small) plus '-skopia' (viewing, watching, derived from 'skopein', to look at or examine) — the same '-scope' family that gave English telescope and periscope. The practice took off in the 1600s once lens-grinders discovered that a few curved pieces of glass could reveal a universe of 'animalcules' squirming in a drop of pond water, though the word itself followed the invention, naming a craft that was already busy upending what people thought counted as empty space.
- first microscopist
- van Leeuwenhoek ground lenses to inspect his own plaque
- resolution limit
- light microscopes can't beat roughly half a light wavelength
- electron version
- uses electron beams, magnifying millions, not hundreds, of times
- nobel moment
- 2014 chemistry prize for microscopy that cheated that light limit