YAGT: If you ever wondered what your brass REALLY looks like

[Cerpin Taxt]

wow, that's pretty incredible! looking at nerve tissue/cells?

Those pics are Bovine Pulmonary Artery Endothelial cells (BPAE). They're from a professionally prepared slide that I used to do demonstrations of our systems, so they're real clean and bright.

The sample cells are treated with special proteins that the cells incorporate into their structure, but those proteins carry "piggyback" molecules that will fluoresce when excited with a specific wavelength, giving off a different wavelength in emission. Different proteins are marked with different fluorescent molecules to produce the various colors for different cell structures.

The scope uses an assembly of filters and a dichroic mirror to hit the sample with the excitation light, but only allow the emission light back to the eye or camera. Multiple color channels are taken and then overlayed to create the final images.

I miss the microscopy. Don't really miss the sales part, but working with the equipment was always really cool.

 

[franksta]

we have an EDS on our SEM, but i was too lazy to do it on this EDS can be hit-or-miss, so we tend not to rely on it for precise compositional values. it is a good indicator though, as you said, for checking to see if there's contamination, or if you want to get a rough idea of the sample chemical composition.

I too am familiar with the "too lazy to do [EDS]". When we had the huge container of LN2 outside it wasn't so bad. It supplied our house N2 and we could also drain off some liquid for EDX or "fun". As it turns out that was costing us $30k or more per year so we nixed it and now use individual cylinders at the point of use. The liquid is now a little more difficult to get and I've not done any EDX since.

 

[Sukhoi]

care to explain? i don't understand how that happens off the top of my head

Well, consider that grain growth is thermally driven. If you severely plastically deform at room temp, there is more thermal energy available for recovery and grain growth than if you process at cryo temperatures. If you have access, see http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0079642505000228

 

[Fenixgoon]

Well, consider that grain growth is thermally driven. If you severely plastically deform at room temp, there is more thermal energy available for recovery and grain growth than if you process at cryo temperatures. If you have access, see http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0079642505000228

oh right. i always think of things in the most general case, but some aluminum can recrystallize at low temps given enough deformation