I know the machine fires electrons at a sample and the electrons are reflected back. How does that translate into a super detailed image? Why is it higher resolution than a light microscope? Why can it only use dead samples?
Edit: Also, why is it in black and white?
In: Technology
Electrons have extremely short wavelengths, much shorter than visible light. These very short wavelengths allow for much greater angular resolution from the light being reflected off of the object, which allows an immense amount of detail to be exposed when something is imaged with an electron microscope. The shorter the wavelength, the more instances of the light source of that wavelength can be captured in an image. It’s impractical (and unsafe) to do it on larger scales.
It’s almost like sampling with audio files. Visible light photons are like an mp3: the quality (detail) is lower because the format takes less samples when ripped from its source, because the samples are bigger (like a normal photograph taken in larger wavelength light). An electron microscope is like a lossless audio format, such as FLAC: it takes a ton of tiny samples of the source material (like an image taken using an electron microscope with smaller wavelength light), allowing for a higher quality representation of that source.
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