h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

After my meeting with a prospective ghostwriting client yesterday, I wandered into one of the university buildings to see what the head technician was up to. (He's Gothsis's fiancee.) He was sitting in his office looking hideously bored with whatever it was he was doing, and was glad to be interrupted.

"Let's go and play with the electron microscope," he said.

He led me to the electron microscope room, with was small and warm and cosy. It was lined with dusty old shelves full of odd bits of bioscientific tat, and there were a few falling-apart chairs stacked on top of each other beside a battered workbench. In stark contrast to these was the microscope console, which looked like the inside of a cockpit, what with all the switches and buttons and joysticks and monitors.

The technician pointed out what looked like a beaker of gold standing on the workbench. "That's the electroplater," he said. He explained that many items, especially organic ones, have to be plated with gold before being put inside the microscope, because the microscope scans them by bombarding them with electrons, by the same means as a TV screen is bombarded to produce a picture.

"If something isn't gold-plated first," he said, "you see it sort of burning up on the monitor in front of you."

He had earlier found a tiny dead spider in the room, which he had gold plated, and he showed it to me: it looked as though it had been moulded by a master jeweller the size of a fairy.

The microscope stood at one end of the console, looking like a stumpy iron gypsy-stove. The technician opened the door in its side and inserted the spider, on a little dish. Then he switched on one of the monitors and carried out a series of arcane manoeuvres with the knobs and buttons. The spider appeared on the screen. WOW! The detail was incredible! I used the joystick to rove across its body, feeling like someone in a hot-air balloon floating over an alien landscape. The technician switched off the light in the room to improve the effect and zoomed the image in and out to give me different perspectives of the spider's topology.

You can see pictures of our spider session here: http://public.fotki.com/Snailrind/electron_micrographs/.

(as before on email)

Coincidentally enough, I was looking at a tiny spider here under the ordinary microscope a few weeks ago. It isn't necessary to use electron wavelengths to view the hairs (and of course without the gold plating you get to see the original material of those and eyes etc better) but it is necessary for the most extreme detail.

Wow, what fun to play with an electron microscope!

I bet you can think of loads more things to try out.

Yes, he said I could bring stuff from home into the department to look at with the microscope.

All ideas welcome.

I quite fancy watching something burning up in it, too.

What magnification were you using on yours, SEF?

> "What magnification"

I think it was only x8 objective and x7 or x15 eyepiece, though I may have used the x40 objective too. I really liked the hexagonal patterning on its legs.

Unfortunately, I didn't take any photos immediately and the spider wasn't there on the slide when I next came to look. I assume it blew away with a door opening and closing rather than walking off though, because it had seemed pretty dead (of natural causes such as starvation and dessication) when I found it on a shelf and hadn't moved of its own accord in all the time I'd been observing it on and off (days/hours). I never did find it again in the vicinity of the microscope despite looking reasonably hard. I suppose I could start a cult of the resurrected spider but I don't think I'll bother.

!!!!!

hey, can you ask to keep the gold plated afterwards? You could make great jewellery! Or if there's anything lying around they really don't want, can you send it me for my boxes?

zdt

I'll ask. Email me a postal address.

EEk! can't find your email address! Do you have mine?

zdt

My email address is at the top of my PS: snailrind at pobblesquattle dot freeserve dot co dot uk. And yes, I have your email address.

SEF, one thing I liked about the electron microscope as opposed to a light microscope was the depth of field. With my own microscope, I'm forever having to twiddle the knob up and down in order to see everything, and I can never see it all at once. (Unless it's flat, obviously, but I don't look at many flat things.)

Of course, one can't look at anything alive under an EM, which is also a shame.



I lost a dead scorpion in the same way once. I never did find it.

Just emailed you!



zdt

Okay, got it.

I might be able to send you biology-related tat and dead things, but as far as gold-plated organisms go, I mean they're tiny: pin-head sized. They'd be lost in a cheese box, and probably lost in the post! If I wanted to gold-plate bigger things, I'd probably have to offer some cash for the gold.

Anyway, I'll see what's available.

Oh, yes--while I'm thinking about it: if anyone has tried to email me during the past several weeks and hasn't had a reply, I might not have received your email. A bunch of my incoming mail disappeared into the aether after Gothly updated the software and the computer stopped recognising "snailrind" as a valid recipient.

It's fixed now, so do resend me anything important.

Biology related dead tat sounds; i can hang on for the gold plated rhinoceros for a while!

Like the speling of "aether"; it reminds me of "faerie"; much preferable to "fairy"

zdt

> "I lost a dead scorpion in the same way once. I never did find it."

I think I'd be a lot more concerned if one of those was lying around somewhere that I might accidentally kneel/stand on it etc. I would go on looking and looking and ...

Well, it had already been trodden on when I had it--by my mother, in bare feet. That's what killed it. It was a pressed scorpion: much prettier, I felt at the time, than pressed flowers.

Neither it nor my mother had been looking where they were going.

Terri, I own a bunch of dead insects and shells and things. Are they any good to you, or can you get such things aplenty yourself? What about bones and teeth, feathers, etc?

I wish I could send you some coral, but unfortunately it would be illegal. The university here has a load of coral specimens that were collected decades ago, before certain corals became protected; now they have no use for it, but it's illegal for them to give it away!

No chance of this unregarded coral being sent to Sussex then?

I will happily use absolutely anything! But obviously don't get into trouble with customs or whoever.

I also trod barefoot on a scorpion & it came off worst...i thought at the time it was merely yet another giant cockroach

OOh so, Avernus, what do you do with coral then?

to lurk Avernus PS

zdt

I can't think of anything to gold-plate and have a look at. I love looking at pollen under a microscope, but I suppose that has been done.

How about visitors. No not that kind! We get lots of moths etc and they often die in the flat as well and some have amazing antennae. Whole bodies would be too big I imagine, last played with EMs years ago. But the antennae could be interesting?

Dust?!