• Question: What is the coolest thing that you have seen through a microscope

    Asked by Lazarbeam to Maria on 12 Nov 2019.
    • Photo: Maria McNamara

      Maria McNamara answered on 12 Nov 2019:


      A few weeks ago I was hosting a public event demonstrating our electron microscopes to adults and children. I had a dead wasp in the microscope chamber and I was showing the members of the public the wasp’s mouthparts. As we were looking at it a mite crawled out of the wasp’s mouth and up and over its head. I was absolutely stunned – bear in mind that in the microscope chamber there is no air and the sample was being hit by a beam of electrons travelling at one-third of the speed of light and a voltage of 15,000 volts!

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