For the SEM workshop, I scanned a few chia seeds.
To be perfectly honest, even after reading and hearing and even seeing how the machine works at a high level, it’s still hard for me to wrap my head around the way an electron microscope works, and how it produces a picture. It figures, since I can’t even reliably describe how a camera works, but that’s okay!
It was awesome to see how vastly different one seed could be from the next. Some seeds have a sort of flaky/bumpy coating, while others are perfectly smooth. Donna and I were trying to guess why this might be the case. Maybe the smooth ones were older, and had already “molted”? Maybe the smooth ones were younger and hadn’t dried out yet? It was great getting to experience the total perspective shift that comes with seeing something so small so clearly.
Lastly, here is my first attempt to make an anaglyphic display.
First, the stereo pairs:
And now, the attempt:
