OT: Photo of a single atom by David Nadlinger wins top prize

[Joakim]

On Wednesday, 14 February 2018 at 09:09:32 UTC, Mike Franklin 
wrote:
> On Wednesday, 14 February 2018 at 01:11:33 UTC, David Nadlinger 
> wrote:
>> On Tuesday, 13 February 2018 at 23:09:07 UTC, Ali Çehreli 
>> wrote:
>>> David (aka klickverbot) is a longtime D contributor […]
>>
>> … who is slightly surprised at the amount of media interest 
>> this has attracted. ;)
>
> David, this is so cool.  Congratulations!
>
> But I've been wondering something:  Obviously atoms are not 
> this large, so what are we seeing in that photograph?  atom 
> motion-blur?

This article notes that the electrodes are 2 mm apart:

https://qz.com/1205279/photo-of-an-atom-a-scientist-captured-an-incredible-photograph/

Zooming in on the photo there, let's say the atom takes up 1/20th 
of the width, so that would put it at 100 micrometers, or 1 
million Angstroms.  This site says the width of a Strontium atom 
is 4.38 Angstroms, likely measured by packing a bunch into solid 
form:

http://periodictable.com/Properties/A/AtomicRadius.v.html

So yeah, it looks 250,000 times bigger than you'd expect, 
probably because of all kinds of effects like the light spreading 
out, the limited resolution of the camera's sensor, and motion of 
the atom.