How Are Atoms How Are Atoms'seen?

How are atoms 'seen'?

You can 'see' atoms, but you’re not really seeing the atom directly. What you can actually see is the electron field that is created by the electrons around the atom, and how they produce a current when they interact with a very fine tip on an electron microscope.

A study was recently released that imaged atoms in a different way than what is usually done. What this group in America did was to take a sheet of graphene which is a single layer of carbon atoms, very similar to a honeycomb which all stack up to make graphite. When you peel away layers of graphite you get graphene. They then sprinkled molecules over the layer of graphene and ran a tunnelling electron microscope across the surface (function of the microscope explained in source 2), and because the graphene is very consistent and regular in its structure, it is very easy to subtract any effects that the graphene may be causing away from any other signals that you get. This enabled the group to actually see the structure and shapes of the molecules.

In source 1 what you are seeing is the first direct observation of an atoms electron orbital. To capture the image researchers utilised this incredible device. The orbital structure is the space in an atom that is occupied by an electron. But when describing super microscopic particles such as those of the atom, scientists have to rely on wave functions, which is the scientific way of describing the fuzzy states of quantum particles. Usually scientists use formulas such as the Schrodinger equation to describe these states, but this very often results in complex numbers and complicated