9.4. Resolution

We normally think of resolution of as our ability to distinguish detail on things, whether that is the resolution of our phone screen or when looking through a microscope. When we look through a normal optical microscope are able to view living cells (on the order of micrometers), however we are unable to clearly view things much smaller than this. These limitations are due to the fact that the things we are looking at are getting towards a similar size as the wavelengths of visible light.

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The above image shows a tiny mite (approx the size of the width of a human hair), taken with an electron microscope. Because electrons have a much smaller wavelength than visible light (see more about electron and matter waves in Chapter 12), electron microscopes have a much higher resolution. There are a number of other imaging technologies that provide much higher resolutions than visible microscopes - IBM used a device called a 'scanning tunnelling microscope' to produce the world's smallest film; stop motion footage produced by imaging individual atoms.