Talk:Scanning tunneling microscope

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

NERD ALERT —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.91.195.117 (talk) 14:34, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

I figured out how to put the equations in, and now my next barrier (heh) is to figure out how to get my images loaded up. To respond to the question about NIST, I have heard about this, but I cannot say that I know enough to judge. All that I know is that Binnig and Rohrer got the Nobel Prize, so apparently there is a large community that credits them. However, that does not mean that conventional opinion is correct in that assessment; if you believe that Young et al. ought be mentioned, I would be glad to see you make the proper adjustment to this page. I only changed the text on this page completely because there seemed to be some concern about the previous version of the page not having references for the information. I did not mean to remove mention of NIST to take any credit that may be due. Thank you. Electronegativity 04:11, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

I noticed there was a sentence in the article about the NIST guys, and then when I loaded the page again, the sentence was gone... I think it might be important to mention that stuff. It is really worth checking out the original 1972 paper - R. Young, J. Ward, and F. Scire, Rev. Sci. Instrum. 43, 999-1011 (1972). Their SPM was called the "topografiner" and worked using field emission rather than tunneling, but in the paper they observed electron tunneling and speculated about the high tip/sample distance dependence of the interaction and how useful this might be. Binnig and Rohrer moreso just overcame the experimental problems inherent in using tunneling to do real microscopy. -Scott —Preceding unsigned comment added by 160.94.96.186 (talk) 21:11, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

I changed the text section of this article. I replaced it with my own text, complete with all references. I did not remove the images, nor did I add any more. If I learn how to add fancy equations, I hope to add them in the future. Electronegativity 05:20, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

I didn't change it, but I think using the term "stylus" in the intro is confusing and should instead be replaced with "tip".

I removed the following text from the beginning of "Overview":

"Despite the questionable and self-serving actions of the Swedish council in awarding other europeans a Nobel for the invention of the STM it and scanning probe microscopy was invented by a group at NIST (at the time the National Bureau of Standards) in the mid-sixties in Gaithersburg MD. The work done by IBM Zurich were important improvements but derivative at best. The greater advance over the first SPM inventors was the later invention of the AFM by Cal Quate of Stanford."

I am not certain whether the above statement is true, however, the language seems to be severely biased, and the following link to NIST's website would seem to suggest that they themselves do not share the perspective of the author of the above text:

http://physics.nist.gov/GenInt/STM/text.html

Unfortunately I forgot to log in before I removed the above text, but remarks can be directed to me all the same. Ptomato 03:23, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

It may be good to speak about the different modes of the STM, vacuum conditions... I will try to find graphs and good explanations, I will be very happy to have somebody correcting me or reading drafts

I believe the last two paragraphs of the overview section are copied directly from NIST's website; is that kosher? Tobinmarcus 22:42, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

I tagged the article with the copyright thing, wasn't sure whether to do that or just delete the last two paragraphs so I'll let someone more experienced decide. Tobinmarcus 01:04, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, I decided. I removed the last 3 paragraphs which is what was the copied part. That's all that is necessary. The rest can stand on its own, but will need some expansion to show the inventor, etc. DGG 08:05, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

forgot to mention--this sort of thing with non-cordinated parts and low-quality or copyvio sections tacked on is generally the results of vandals messing with an article. It isnt all that uncommon, unfortunately. Be bold in removing the copyvio parts if the article is obviously something important. If necessary, remove the whole text and leave a stub. The right version is likely to be somewhere in the page history. I'll keep a look out for the vandals. Good work in spotting it. DGG 08:08, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Isn't "viewing" a pretty strong word for what a scanning tunneling microscope does? We don't consider a bathymetric map "viewing" the bottom of a lake. All the STM is really doing is making a topo map of the surface of the sample. That is hardly "viewing" the sample. I think that "mapping" or "creating an image of" would be more appropriate. Scitch (talk) 21:55, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Where it says "won its inventors, ... the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986[1].", the reference does not relate to winning the prize at all...193.137.24.32 (talk) 13:06, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I just used the same STM setup today that is shown in the "University of St. Andrews" photo (not at St. Andrews though), and I must say that they did not cleave the platinum-iridium wire very sharply. It looks rather blunt. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.84.39.218 (talk) 02:29, 11 March 2008 (UTC)