3 ms·
With hard xrays you can visualize interatomic densities and lone pairs. I know there are structures down to 0.5Å resolution now but that must have required car
by natechols 6y ago
With hard xrays you can visualize interatomic densities and lone pairs. I know there are structures down to 0.5Å resolution now but that must have required careful setup. I've seen diffraction out to 0.75Å but I could never collect complete data at that resolution.
- thechao 6y agoI’m imagining a collector plate the size of my dining room table, with a staff of crazy-haired scrawny physicists clambering around some sort of neo-Victorian rube-Goldbergesque X-ray source — like a wine-barrel-sized copper anode and a small nuclear power plant for the arc.
- natechols 6y agoThis is not far from the truth, except the detectors are actually relatively small (and very expensive), there's more aluminum foil than the Victorians used, and we have slightly better hair on average. The last time I used one of these facilities, it looked like this (and still does): https://lcls.slac.stanford.edu/sites/lcls.slac.stanford.edu/files/styles/basic_page_large_image/public/cxi-banner01.jpg https://lcls.slac.stanford.edu/sites/lcls.slac.stanford.edu/... Compared to this electron microscopy is downright boring - and a couple of orders of magnitude cheaper to set up.