Question: How do you take photos of such small things?

Jarrod Hart answered on 16 Jun 2016:

Great question – it is difficult!

You can start with a magnifying glass, and then maybe a few glass lenses lined up (a microscope) – but eventually there is a limit – as light is made of waves and these waves are about 1/2000th of a millimeter, you can’t use light to look at very small things.

However, someone realized in the 1930’s that you can ‘take pictures’ using a beam of electrons and an electron detector – they invented a machine called a ‘transmission electron microscope’ which allowed then to see smaller things than ever before.

They then figured out better ways to detect electrons (‘backscattered’) and invented the ‘scanning electron microscope’ (SEM) which is what is used to take the pictures in my profile – the sort of grey pictures.

It works a bit like shooting billions of tiny balls at something and collecting all the ones that bounce off in a certain direction – and it makes a picture!

Google ‘SEM of insects’ then look at the image search results!