• mononomi@feddit.nlEnglish
      22·
      4 days ago

      I think this is referring to electron microscopy, and å is a unit for 10-10 meters. Electron microscopy can be very noisy and it is hard to distinguish objects

      • wewbull@feddit.ukEnglish
        2·
        4 days ago

        Angstroms hurt my brain. A $10^{-10}$ of a metre, but not a nanometre or a picometre. Just…why?

        • Hule@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          16 hours ago

          … However, they soon realized that the definition of the metre at the time, based on a material artifact, was not accurate enough for their work. So, around 1907 they defined their own unit of length, which they called “Ångström”, based on the wavelength of a specific spectral line. It was only in 1960, when the metre was redefined in the same way, that the angstrom became again equal to 10^10 metre. Wikipedia

          Edit: also some atoms are about 1 angstrom in size, so it’s convenient, I guess…

    • VocationConfining@piefed.socialEnglish
      16·
      4 days ago

      Electron Microscopy. Often used to see very small structures at high resolution. So 1.2 Å is 1.2 angstrom, or 0.12 nm.

      Edit: I should add that often at really high magnification, there is a lot of noise, so the joke is that non EM people would just see static. Not too far from the truth. Practice helps seeing the patterns!