Perception is a really intriguing concept to me. It is such a personal thing, yet ever evolving as society, science, and art does. Perception really encompasses all disciplines- it matters in science, in literature, art, history…
It really connects to the idea of “imagining the impossible”-things we believe true now might be proven wrong by future innovations, and things we can’t imagine now may become realities. Afflictions such as cancer might become as unthreatening and treatable as the common cold. We could learn how to accurately predict how viruses mutate and develop ways to kill them.
Talking about perspective, and seeing the video of the tooth being magnified and of our planet, during the lecture made me think of how when you look out the window of an airplane as it is ascending, big things-cars, houses, freeways, mountains-all look smaller, until the surface looks pretty much smooth, whereas with microscopy things, like that tooth, that look smooth from the surface, when you “travel” closer, the surface reveals itself as full of mountains and valleys, peaks and crevices.
I thought that the STED (stimulated emission depletion) microscopy technique was really cool to learn about, and it was a unique opportunity to actually see the microscope when there are so few in the world. STED microscopy allows us to see nanosized structures at a resolution below the diffraction limit (light has a physical limit on resolution dictated by the diffraction limit). It uses a confocal laser scanning microscope and works by greatly decreasing the focal sport of fluorescence emission on the focal plane of the lens. We also saw a scanning electron microscope in use, as well as the preparation for use beforehand, and we learned about atomic force microscopes, which actually physically touch the surface of the sample with a tiny tip called a cantilever. That microscope was also interesting to learn about because it can be used to differentiate healthy cells from cancerous cells, which are softer.
http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/techniques/fluorescence/fluorhome.html
http://www.nanoscience.com/education/AFM.html
http://sulcus.berkeley.edu/FLM/MS/Physio.Percept.html
http://www.mpibpc.mpg.de/groups/hell/STED.htm
http://www.wolframscience.com/reference/notes/1076b