Cryogenic electron microscopy

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Cryogenic electron microscopy

In: Chemistry

Anonymous 0 Comments

Heat causes things to jiggle.

Bouncing electrons off of something to make a picture is harder if lots of electrons are bouncing away from your microscopes detector instead of into it.

Making things really cold removes most of the jiggling.

Less jiggle means more electrons bounce back to where you want them to in your detector.

Imagine that hitting baseballs into the outfield would create a picture of the bat made out of baseballs.

Now imaging your bat is wiggling and shaking like a pool noodle.

More balls are going to go everywhere but the outfield. Eventually enough will make it there to create a picture, but it’s not going to make a very good picture.