Electron Microscopes and the Moon

Greetings, blog followers! I have more material than I expected for this post, as the iMax movie that I mentioned in the last post was fascinating! But first, a brief overview of our adventures.

We headed out into the city and ate dinner at "Life Cafe", a vegetarian restaurant centered around healthy food- in other words, my dream restaurant. Afterwards, we took the Star Ferry to the mainland side of Hong Kong, Kowloon, to catch the evening iMax show, "Mysteries of the Unseen World", at the Space Museum. We had to go when we did because the movie was only in English on Saturday and Sunday night. We've had to be more flexible here in Hong Kong than in Denver.

It was a colorful journey, since the buildings in Hong Kong turn in to light shows at night, with fantastic patterns climbing up walls everywhere. Many buildings even have animated patterns. In any case, we got to the Space Museum. We were early, so we tried out the moonwalk exhibit, which straps you into a harness to simulate walking on the moon. According to a video that was playing at the exhibit, the most effective form of movement on the moon is the kangaroo hop.

Now for the iMax. It was a long video that is hard to summarize, so I'll just provide a few facts that I found interesting.

-Not only can we see individual atoms with microscopes, we can also use the tips of these microscopes to move atoms around, creating whatever kind of structure we like.

-Speaking of atomic structures, we have created the world's thinnest substance. It is made of carbon, and it is only one carbon atom thick. The substance is as tough as diamond, and almost as flexible as rubber. When curled up into tubes, this substance forms carbon nanotubes, a possible building material of the future.

-A butterfly's wings may seem flat, but each wing is made of many, many tiny scales, and if you zoom in even farther, you can see the tiny ridges on these scales that are cells. One type of butterfly has magnificent blue wings, and this is because those tiny cells reflect only the purest blue light.

-An electron microscope is more precise than a light microscope simply because light is too big.

-A dragonfly is the world's best flyer- it can fly in place, backwards, and even upside down. This is because it is capable of moving each of its four wings independently at the same time.

Thanks for reading!

Next up: An undetermined outing! At least there is an outing.