Electron Microscopy
From neurotica.com
The combination of intense curiosity regarding all things scientific or technical, having an "I don't care what society thinks I shouldn't do at home" attitude, and the fact that I made a bit of money during the I.T. boom of the 1990s (my, how times have changed), I have a lot of stuff here that most people would consider...well, somewhat unusual to find in someone's house.
One of my favorite recreational goodies is an ETEC Autoscan scanning electron microscope. It's an older unit, built in the early 1980s (that makes it sorta "middle-aged" in the world of electron microscopes) and used for many years at a pharmaceuticals firm. I bought it from this firm a few years ago...it had been in storage for a couple of years, and had all the little problems that a high-vacuum lab instrument that's been open to atmospheric pressure for too long would normally have...leaky seals, inaccurate vacuum guages, contaminated diffusion pump oil, you name it. It took quite a bit of work and more than a few phone calls to an electron microscope expert up in Pennsylvania to get it up and running, but it was worth it. I now have the right to brag that I can repair, maintain, and run an electron microscope...which, at least in the circles that I hang in, is pretty cool.
I've learned a great deal with this instrument. The microscopic world is truly amazing...things in our world that might seem completely uninteresting, even utterly boring, come to life under 50,000X magnification. For example...How interesting is a burnt-out light bulb? Not very. They happen, they're a fact of modern life...you unscrew it, throw it in the trash, and screw in a new one. But not me...I cracked the glass away, put a small piece the fried tungsten filament on a specimen mount, stuck it in the SEM chamber and pumped it down...a few minutes later, I was rewarded by a stunning image that looked more like alien plant life than something from a burnt-out light bulb.
Sadly, my SEM has fallen into disuse because I became very busy with other projects and work. When an instrument sits idle like this, especially with the vacuum system open to air, things deteriorate a bit, so it is now nonfunctional. I hope to get it running again soon.