Science with Combs of Light
The spectrum of a frequency comb, commonly generated by a mode-locked femtosecond laser, consists of several hundred thousand precisely evenly spaced spectral lines. Such laser frequency combs have revolutionized the art of measuring the frequency of....
More details | Watch nowNanoscopy – allowing molecules to be examined inside living cells
Eric Betzig shared the 2014 Chemistry Nobel prize with fellow American William E. Moerner and Romanian-German Stefan W. Hell for revolutionising science through the development of super-resolved fluorescence to exceed the accepted limits of tradition....
More details | Watch nowSeeing is Believing – A Hundred Years of Visualizing Molecules
It has been a hundred years since molecules were first visualized directly by using x-ray crystallography. That gave us our first look at molecules as simple as common salt to one as complex as the ribosome that has almost a million atoms. In the las....
More details | Watch nowOptical Microscopy – the Resolution Revolution
Throughout the 20th century it was widely accepted that a light microscope relying on conventional optical lenses cannot discern details that are much finer than about half the wavelength of light (200-400 nm), due to diffraction. However, in the 199....
More details | Watch nowYou can see a lot by observing: Optical Microscopy 2.0
Biological research and medicine were transformed by the invention and improvement of the optical microscope. Since the early 1990s, there has been another revolution in optical imaging, and manipulation of individual biological molecules and bio-mo....
More details | Watch nowThe Discovery of Quasi-Periodic Materials
Crystallography has been one of the mature sciences. Over the years, the modern science of crystallography that started by experimenting with x-ray diffraction from crystals in 1912 has developed a major paradigm Ð that all crystals are ordered an....
More details | Watch nowQuasi-Periodic Materials – Crystal Redefined
Crystallography has been one of the mature sciences. Over the years, the modern science of crystallography that started by experimenting with x-ray diffraction from crystals in 1912, has developed a major paradigm that all crystals are ordered and ....
More details | Watch nowLensless imaging
John Rodenburg looks at novel ways of capturing highly enlarged images without the use of conventional lenses.
More details | Watch nowMicroscopy and Materials
How new science is transforming the optical microscope
There are two rules for making an optical microscope; the lenses must be small, since defects of colour and focus increase with lens size, and the lenses must capture light from the object over as wide an angle as possible to record fine detail. This....
More details | Watch nowMicroscopy goes cold: secrets of frozen viruses
Viruses are a major cause of death and disease. Too small to be seen by light microscopy, they were first visualised about 50 years ago by electron microscopy. Dr. Crowther describes his work on the development of the methods and illustrates how he h....
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