JOURNEY TO THE HEART OF THE MATTER

JOURNEY TO THE HEART OF THE MATTER A voyage to the smallest universe imaginable. The magnifying-glass. Optical microscope. Tunnel-effect microscope. The world of atoms. Thesub-atomic world: one where practically everything is empty. Quarks: the basic building blocks of all matter. INTRODUCTION Even in old days it was known tha the use of certain glass and other transparent materials meant that objects appeared to be larger. The magnifying-glass OPTICAL MICROSCOPES The study of optical lenses served as the foundation for the invention of the microscope in the 16th. century This way a world of tiny beings and structures was discovered. Our body is a gigantic colony of uncountable, microscopic living-beings that each have their own forms of life and locomotion. Bacteria. Due to the microscope, Biology and Medicine advanced tremendously. It also helped to discard the theory of spontaneous generation. Thanks to the microscope it was possible to isolate and study different tissues and cells. Many illneses could also be studied. The magnifying capacity of the optical miscroscope. ELECTRON MICROSCOPES How a electron microscope works. Its power of resolution is very great. The study of viruses. The DNA. THE ATOM Definition, composition and the size of atoms. The matter of an atom. The neutron stars. The nuclei of an atom. The basic structure of matter: the quarks, the leptons. SUMMARY