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'Science GIFs' was one of the largest and most active science-oriented collections on the Google+ social network with over 325,000 followers at the time of its shutting down. This website serves as a backup of the content from the collection.

https://plus.google.com/collection/A2NSc

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A bacterium on a diatom on an amphipod

15 June 2016

Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) is a powerful imaging technique that produces images of a sample by scanning it with a beam of electrons instead of light. The electrons interact with the atoms in the sample to produce signals containing information about the sample’s surface topology and composition. Because electrons are much smaller than the wavelength of visible light, SEM can achieve resolutions better than 1 nanometer (100,000x thinner than human hair).

Here, an SEM is used to zoom in on a prepared sample by several orders of magnitude. The microscope initially reveals an amphipod, a type of shell-less crustacean (1mm). As it zooms in on the head of the amphipod, a round, silica-shelled algae called a diatom is revealed (100µm). As it zooms in even further, a rod-shaped bacterium can be seen resting on the diatom (500nm).

Source: http://goo.gl/gxGDPb

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A bacterium on a diatom on an amphipod