The Microscope

the scanning electron microscope

it is only thirteen years since the scanning electron microscope has been available commercially. yet, even in this short period of time, this instrument has been a powerful tool in the investigation of topography, electrical and magnetic properties, crystal structure, cathodoluminescent characteristics etc. of solid specimens. today, this type of microscope has opened its place alongside the c...

The Scanning Optical Microscope

Instead of forming an entire image at one instant, a scanning optical microscope (SOM) scans a beam of light across specimen in a regular pattern, or raster, and forms its image point by point. A point of light is focused to a diffraction-limited spot on the sample by the objective lens. An image is built up point by point by a detector, either below the slide (if the microscope is exclusively ...

Strings through the Microscope *

Over the last few years, string theory has changed profoundly. Most importantly , novel duality relations have emerged which involve gauge theories of brane excitations on one side and various closed string backgrounds on the other. In this lecture, we introduce the fundamental ingredients of modern string theory and explain how they are modeled through 2D (boundary) conformal field theory. Thi...

The Microscope in Medicine

Heat under the microscope