great comment on the page:
"trivia: molecules have no color"
They don't? Then where does color come from?
Why wouldn't gold atoms be golden?
i'm hoping the guy was being sarcastic but...
IBM takes first 3D image of atomic bonds
21–30 of 63 posts
Re: IBM takes first 3D image of atomic bonds
#22great comment on the page: "trivia: molecules have no color" They don't? Then where does color come from? Why wouldn't gold atoms be golden? i'm hoping the guy was being sarcastic but...
Color is the wave length of light you can see. Red is one wavelength, blue another, infra red and ultra violet yet another. But you can't see those last two.
Molecules have no color because they are smaller then the shortest length wave of light you and I can see.
Think about dropping a stone in a quiet pond. Think of the waves that are created. If they bump into a large obstacle they are reflected back. If they hit a tiny one, like a thin blade of grass sticking out of the water, they just flow around.
Gold is golden because a whole lot of gold atoms bunched together reflect a yellowish range of light. Gold the material is gold colored. A single gold atom does not have color.
Re: IBM takes first 3D image of atomic bonds
#23That is fucking awesome. It's depressing to consider the fact that it would probably get downvoted on the science subreddit.
Don't be depressed, it's the top link on science reddit. Though, sadly, the top comment is grammar correction :/
Re: IBM takes first 3D image of atomic bonds
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I would rather read the news from the source, than from those gizmodo subhuman morons" Cut them some slack. At least they're watching/trying. Their article is a news item here, after all.
Have you read the comments on gizmodo? They're trying? Trying what? What they usually do is copy-paste from the source. That does not add much value. Hence, I ask again: where's the URL to the original press release? I don't want to read such great news from a website that allows comments from retards who know nothing about Physics...
I have an easy win for you. Stop reading the comments! They are almost universally awful.
Re: IBM takes first 3D image of atomic bonds
#25Where's the URL to the original IBM press release / article? I would rather read the news from the source, than from those gizmodo subhuman morons any day...
"I would rather read the news from the source, than from those gizmodo subhuman morons" Cut them some slack. At least they're watching/trying. Their article is a news item here, after all.
Loftus and Matt Buchanan are quite good. I hope they'e getting paid a lot, because being associated with the likes of Jesus Diaz is not what I'd call a career- or even life-enhancing.
Re: IBM takes first 3D image of atomic bonds
#26great comment on the page: "trivia: molecules have no color" They don't? Then where does color come from? Why wouldn't gold atoms be golden? i'm hoping the guy was being sarcastic but...
[deleted]
Re: IBM takes first 3D image of atomic bonds
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you read the comments on gizmodo? They're trying? Trying what? What they usually do is copy-paste from the source. That does not add much value. Hence, I ask again: where's the URL to the original press release? I don't want to read such great news from a website that allows comments from retards who know nothing about Physics...
I have an easy win for you. Stop reading the comments! They are almost universally awful.
True. But would it be too far-fetched to claim that the quality of a website / blog can be indirectly measured by the quality of its comments? A quality blog should not tolerate certain comments which are more appropriate for YouTube.
Re: IBM takes first 3D image of atomic bonds
#28How is the picture 3D? Also shouldn't we see electrons in pi clouds above the aromatic rings?
I'd say it's 3D in the sense that it's a height map rather than a cross section. (We've been able to see cross-sectional images of bonds for some time using transmission electron microscopy, I think). It's not a full three-dimensional structure though, and it'd only work on flattish molecules like this. It should be noted that this sort of resolution has been attainable for some time using scanning tunneling microsco…
about the brightness at the ends - I'm pretty sure that is due to the fact that this is a pi-conjugated system; that is, the pi-bonded electrons can jump around the whole molecule. This, together with the fact that the molecule is finite in size, means that the pi electrons are confined to a rectangle of lower potential energy, and when you solve the quantum mechanics (similarly to the quantum harmonic oscillator) you'll find higher electron density at the edges of the confining potential.
Re: IBM takes first 3D image of atomic bonds
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have an easy win for you. Stop reading the comments! They are almost universally awful.
True. But would it be too far-fetched to claim that the quality of a website / blog can be indirectly measured by the quality of its comments? A quality blog should not tolerate certain comments which are more appropriate for YouTube.
Sigh, when you find the answer to that question, let me know ...
Re: IBM takes first 3D image of atomic bonds
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Second that. Picture of the year as far as I'm concerned. Simply unbelievable. What a time to be alive. So, now that we can 'see' the 3D arrangement in a manner of speaking is there any way we could feed known protein structure in to neural networks by imaging them in quantity and take some of the sting out of protein folding by identifying likely candidate ways to do the folding ? Or is that too big of a leap ?
I think there would be major issues getting folded protein to 5K. Plus proteins "live" in 300K and the oscillations are probably very important for the function (perhaps even more than a single arbitrary structure you would get from a picture like this).
Yes to all of the above. Not to mention that we've long been able to visualize protein molecular structure using X-rays and NMR. This probably isn't very useful to anything related to proteins.