The Microscopist

Had a great time at the RMIT India Summer School.

Scanning electron microscope image of a mosquito’s wing.

Both planes and birds have airfoil shaped wings, it seems bees do too! This image shows a side on view of a bee wing.

Scanning electron microscope image of a bee’s wing.

It’s been a while since my last post – I hope everyone is well! Here is a SEM image of a fly’s eye.

False coloured SEM image of paper. Cellulose fibers from wood chips and recycled paper are cleaned and screened many times before being fed into a paper-making machine.

False coloured SEM image of the hairs on the stem of a prostantheroideae plant, collected from my mother’s garden.

False coloured SEM image of the hairs on a prostantheroideae leaf, collected from my mother’s garden.

False colored SEM image of a fruit fly’s eye sacs which have been damaged by ethanol. This image was originally taken by Matthew Taylor approximately 10 years ago on a Phillips XL30.

I took some time out to add some color to this image of the eye of a fruit fly taken by Matthew Taylor.

False coloured SEM image of Radiolaria (and its reflection - I wanted to practice my GIMP skills)

False coloured scanning electron microscope picture of graphite imaged at angle.

Scanning electron microscope image of graphite.

Image of graphite commonly found in a pencil. In 2004, scientists isolated a material called graphene from graphite using mechanical exfoliation. The discovery of graphene sparked research into many other two dimensional materials which have been exfoliated from bulk materials. Other two dimensional materials include boron nitride, niobium disulfide, molybdenum disulfide, fluorographene, tungsten disulfide, bismuth selenide and black phosphorus. All of these new two dimension materials have promising physical and electronic properties.

False colour SEM image of a spider.

The spherical shape of tin balls allows scientists to correct for astigmatism in images taken by electron microscopes.

My first image recoloured. Tin balls are used to calibrate scanning electron microscopes.