Is it Reasonable to Measure Fluorescence with Single Molecule in 1 Second?

[The Alchemist]

Hi,

I'm doing some calculations on fluorescence and I'm a little stuck on statistics.
Let's say I need to measure 20 seconds to collect 10000 photons from a single molecule.
Then I can say well I want to measure at most 1 second and therefore I need 20 molecules in order to collect 10000 photons in that second.

Is this way of thinking reasonable? Or do I need to take into account some statistics with S/N ratio and say: Poisson distribution.

I can't find any sources to found this reasoning.

Thanks in advance,

 

[Andy Resnick]

I'm not sure what you are getting at, but single-molecule methods are designed to, for example, provide supperresolution (see STORM, for example)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microscopy#PALM.2C_STORM

But I don't understand the purpose of your exercise.

 

[The Alchemist]

Ok. Let me make myself more clear.
I know it's about high resolution that's the reason I use these.
The problem is, the molecule can only emit for about 1 second and then it is destroyed.
So I take more molecules, which results indeed in less spatial resolution, to collect the needed amount of photons in the range of the 'lifetime' of the molecules (1second).
But what I was wondering, can I divide the time (t) it takes for 1 molecule to emit 'theoretically' the amount of photons by x molecules and say these molecules will emit the same amount of photons in t/x seconds.
Or do I need to take some statistics into account before I can simply state this?