Real image of atom!!
Look at this picture carefully. There is a bright spot in the middle of this image. It is actually an atom. You are seeing a picture of an atom before your eyes. The second image is shown zoomed in for convenience. In which you can see an atom emitting light. But how?
First, let's know what the size of an atom is. The size of an atom depends on which element it is an atom of and how many electrons are around its nucleus. For example, a simple hydrogen atom with one proton in the nucleus and one electron around it has a size of 0.025 nanometers. . A nanometer is one billionth of a meter or one millionth of a millimeter. That is, extremely small. Similarly, a gold atom is larger than a hydrogen atom because it has 79 protons and is about ten times larger in size than hydrogen, i.e. 0.14 nanometers.
Now how can the human eye see such a small size? A fine human hair is up to 0.04mm thick as you can see if you look closely. The human eye can see objects up to half the thickness of a fine hair, i.e. objects down to 0.02 mm in size.
But no matter how big an atom is, it cannot be seen by the human eye. But wait!! So how are we seeing the atom in this picture that too without any microscope. Many people ask whether atoms can be seen under a microscope.
The answer is yes, it can be seen, but it requires a special type of microscope, which is called a scanning electron microscope. A typical microscope that you may have seen in labs during school days shows us bacteria or cells through the use of lenses. It is as if the light falls on these small objects and is focused with the help of lenses and this light reaches our eyes through which we see the small objects in a larger size.
However, in a scanning electron microscope, we take pictures of objects with the help of electrons instead of light. From this microscope, the electrons come out fast and collide with the atoms and then scatter everywhere. The electrons that collide with the atoms and come back are focused with the help of magnetic lenses and thus we can see the presence of atoms in a particular place. Make a picture of it.
Now let's come to the question that how are you looking at an atom with the help of light in the image under consideration? So this photo was actually taken on August 7, 2017 by David Nadlinger, a PhD student at Oxford University in the UK, of stornium atoms trapped in a DSLR camera, laser and ion trap in his lab. By making a positive ion of an atom of strontium (atomic number 38) (removing a few electrons from it) Mr. trapped and then laser rays were hit on it, the poor strontium atom was forced to absorb and emit these rays and shine so bright that it was captured by this eccentric dude in the eye of the camera and exposed to the whole world. done.
For this image of the atom, David was awarded the UK Engineering and Physical Research Council Science Photography Prize. So now you have seen the atom with your own eyes. Now you can live in peace.