• Question: What advantages does high magnification give you?

    Asked by anon-201342 to Sophia, Sarah, Meirin, George on 13 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Meirin Oan Evans

      Meirin Oan Evans answered on 13 Mar 2019:

      This question depends on what magnification you mean. In particle physics high magnification might mean looking at smaller and smaller particles. Looking inside an atom reveals the nucleus. Looking inside a nucleus reveals protons and sometimes neutrons. Looking inside protons and neutrons reveals quarks and gluons. As far as we can tell right now, quarks and gluons aren’t made of smaller particles! Electrons also appear to not be made of smaller particles. Quarks, gluons and electrons are the single lego pieces that make up bigger lego structures. With higher magnification (looking at smaller particles), we’re better understanding those tiniest building blocks, which can help understand things like how those building blocks were created in the Big Bang.

    • Photo: George Fulton

      George Fulton answered on 13 Mar 2019:

      In terms of microscopy, magnification means making things that are small, bigger. This doesn’t mean that you can see very small things though, instead we call that resolution and the smaller the resolution the smaller thing that you can see. For an electron microscope for example, the magnification is just how big the pixel on your computer screen is 🙂 kinda bonkers really.

      Going to very high magnifications (assuming you have enough resolution) is very useful because we can look at the structure of materials. This is important because the structure tells us how a material will behave and why it might behave like it does. With a special electron microscope, it is even possible to ‘see’ individual columns of atoms. Quite mind-boggling if you ask me 🙂

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