Single molecule imaged
- Faithfree
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Single molecule imaged
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- Bella Fortuna
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Re: Single molecule imaged
Very cool. It looks like 70s op-art.
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Re: Single molecule imaged
It would probably look cool on a black tee shirt.Bella Fortuna wrote:Very cool. It looks like 70s op-art.

Although it may look like a forum, this site is actually a crowd-sourced science project modelling the slow but inexorable heat death of the universe.
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Re: Single molecule imaged
Faithfree wrote:It would probably look cool on a black tee shirt.Bella Fortuna wrote:Very cool. It looks like 70s op-art.

Or as a painting if you had modernist taste...
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Re: Single molecule imaged
Looks like the image is generated by gauging the electron field repulsion between electrons in the highest occupied molecular orbitals (HOMO) and the valence electrons of the carbon monoxide molecule affixed to the probe.
Which, just so I'm clear, is FUCKING AWESOME!
Which, just so I'm clear, is FUCKING AWESOME!

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Re: Single molecule imaged
Jaw dropping stuff indeed! (oh and Hi SS!!!)ScholasticSpastic wrote:Looks like the image is generated by gauging the electron field repulsion between electrons in the highest occupied molecular orbitals (HOMO) and the valence electrons of the carbon monoxide molecule affixed to the probe.
Which, just so I'm clear, is FUCKING AWESOME!
10 Fuck Off
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Re: Single molecule imaged
Shut the fuck up, bitch. It's your fault that beer is less epic. I miss having it with you.AshtonBlack wrote:(oh and Hi SS!!!)

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Re: Single molecule imaged
Get a room, you two!ScholasticSpastic wrote:Shut the fuck up, bitch. It's your fault that beer is less epic. I miss having it with you.AshtonBlack wrote:(oh and Hi SS!!!)

I'd love to have a huge black light poster of that molecule on the ceiling while I ingested a certain substance and listened to Dark Side of the Moon over and over and over...
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Re: Single molecule imaged
OK, sientificy type person to the rescue please?
If this was scaled up - i.e. the molecule was say the size of the earth, what would be the size of the viewer? Just trying to get more than an intuitive sense of relative size here.
If this was scaled up - i.e. the molecule was say the size of the earth, what would be the size of the viewer? Just trying to get more than an intuitive sense of relative size here.
Re: Single molecule imaged
Roughly the size of the Universe? Give or take?
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Re: Single molecule imaged
Organic chemistry...we meet again...
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Re: Single molecule imaged
I'd guestimate the length of the molecule pictured at about 1400 picometers. A picometer is 1*10^-12 meters.Rumertron wrote: If this was scaled up - i.e. the molecule was say the size of the earth, what would be the size of the viewer? Just trying to get more than an intuitive sense of relative size here.
So that's about 1.4*10^-9 meters for the molecule in scientific notation.
The Earth's equatorial radius is 6,378.1 km, giving us a long diameter of 12756200 meters or 1.27562*10^7 m.
Expanding the molecule to the long diameter of Earth would multiply its length by a factor of about 9.11*10^15.
Assuming a two meter tall observer, we'd increase their length to about 1.82*10^16 m, or almost two lightyears (about 1.93 lightyears, more precisely).
That's what I'd call walking tall.

Don't see how it really helps getting an intuitive sense of relative size, though, as lightyears are well beyond our intuitive grasp of distances.
Oh, and everyone feel free to check my math. I'm often wrong, especially when dealing with values well outside our middle realm of experience.
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