“You can see individual atoms with a powerful microscope.”

It's a common misconception that simply increasing the magnification of a traditional optical microscope will eventually allow us to see individual atoms. This idea likely stems from our everyday experience with magnifying glasses and compound microscopes, where smaller and smaller details become visible as magnification increases. For centuries, the atom was considered the smallest indivisible unit of matter, a theoretical concept rather than something directly observable, reinforcing the belief that they were inherently beyond our sight.

However, the scientific reality is far more fascinating. While conventional optical microscopes are indeed limited by the wavelength of visible light and cannot resolve objects as small as atoms, revolutionary technologies developed in the latter half of the 20th century have made "seeing" individual atoms possible. Instruments like the scanning tunneling microscope (STM), invented in 1981, and advanced transmission electron microscopes (TEMs) operate on entirely different principles. STMs use an extremely sharp conducting tip to scan a surface, detecting tiny electron currents that vary with the atomic landscape, effectively creating a topographical map of individual atoms. TEMs, on the other hand, fire a beam of electrons through a very thin sample, and the way these electrons interact with the atoms creates an image.

People commonly believe that atoms are invisible because they are unimaginably small, far beyond the resolution of the human eye or even standard laboratory microscopes. The idea that a single atom could be imaged often seems counterintuitive, as our visual perception is based on light reflecting off objects. The key distinction lies in understanding that these advanced microscopes don't "see" atoms in the same way our eyes see a ball. Instead, they use electron interactions or quantum tunneling effects to generate representations or images of atomic positions and even their electron orbitals, providing compelling visual evidence of their existence and arrangement.