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Gary Smith
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What is the smallest particle which can be visually observed with a microscope?
You might find this interesting:Gary Smith said:What is the smallest particle which can be visually observed with a microscope?
Thanks!phinds said:You might find this interesting:
It depends on what you mean by "visually observed". Without qualification, most people will understand the term to mean optical observation: Light from the object being observed is directed through a system of lenses to the retina of the eye to form an image. By that definition, the resolution is limited by the wavelength of visible light to a few hundred nanometers.Gary Smith said:What is the smallest particle which can be visually observed with a microscope?
Those images are made by taking the electrical signals coming out of a fairly complicated experimental apparatus and plotting them on a video screen. They'll be hyped as "visual images" but they're better thought of as a visual presentation of non-visual data, like any other graph.Gary Smith said:It looks like a honey comb and the description says, 'Bond-Order Discrimination by Atomic Force Microscopy," Leo Gross et al, Science, September 2012.'
sophiecentaur said:They say "seeing is believing" but our visual appreciation is actually very limited in both ways (large and small scale). it's difficult to draw the line at what's 'visible'...
Is the Moon only a conceptual sphere but a flat disk in daily life? Does Antarctica exist only conceptually for most people? What is the purpose of your question?Gary Smith said:I love it!
Good to remind myself of these things.
Maybe my whole premise is off. I was exploring the idea of the normal range of human awareness. Most people know 'of' molecules and atoms, but the range of felt experience for most people is probably no smaller than the cell. Would it be accurate to say that what cannot be perceived over the senses becomes conceptual? Not to say that what cannot be visually seen does not exist! But what people can relate to in daily life...
This is an interesting topic. Imo, there is too much made of our visual sense. The picture we build in our minds tends to be 'played back' to our consciousness as a TV picture and that makes us conclude that the model is visual. This would imply that people, blind from birth, would have no spatial conception at all, which is clearly nonsense - and quite insulting to someone (not me) who travels into Central London daily and negociates the transport and road system to visit new places regularly.Gary Smith said:I love it!
Good to remind myself of these things.
Maybe my whole premise is off. I was exploring the idea of the normal range of human awareness. Most people know 'of' molecules and atoms, but the range of felt experience for most people is probably no smaller than the cell. Would it be accurate to say that what cannot be perceived over the senses becomes conceptual? Not to say that what cannot be visually seen does not exist! But what people can relate to in daily life...
Let's try to keep the philosophical issues out of this thread. Thank you.Vanadium 50 said:This is more philosophical than physical.
Perhaps we should replace the word "philosophical" with "perception and memory" or some such.berkeman said:Thread re-opened.
Let's try to keep the philosophical issues out of this thread. Thank you.
Without getting into precise details about how small something can be to be "visible", consider this:Gary Smith said:I was exploring the idea of the normal range of human awareness.
Gary Smith said:I do not know how objects of observation appear through an electron microscope or scanning tunneling. Will Google images.
I am looking for the smallest particle which can be seen visually, as it is, by any means.
The smallest particle that can be seen with the naked eye is the grain of dust, which is about 50 micrometers in diameter.
No, individual atoms cannot be seen with the naked eye. They are too small to be seen, even with the most powerful optical microscopes.
The smallest particle that can be observed using a light microscope is about 200 nanometers, which is the size of a small virus.
Yes, particles smaller than atoms can be observed with the use of electron microscopes. These include subatomic particles such as electrons, protons, and neutrons.
The smallest particle that has been observed by scientists is the quark, which is a fundamental building block of protons and neutrons. Quarks have a diameter of less than 10^-18 meters.