Question: What is the difference between a microscope and an electro microscope?

Jamie Gallagher answered on 13 Jun 2011:

Great question!
I’m on the train back from Cheltenham science festival where I was doing a show on this very thing!
Normally we use light for microscopes, but light is actually quite big itself. If we want to see the very smallest of things. Things that are 0.000000001 m then light is no good. We need something smaller- so we use electrons.
We shot them out a gun (instead of a light bulb) and bend the beam of electrons with magnets the way we bend light with lenses.
So they are very similar in a way. But as electrons have a much smaller wavelength than light they can see much more detail.
Think of you palm of you hand as being light and you fingers as electrons. If you take a little object your palm can tell you a little but it is only when you get the detail that you really know what is going on.

Keep the microscope questions coming, brilliant!