submitted 1 month ago by Stitch0815@feddit.org to c/science_memes@mander.xyz

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[-] mononomi@feddit.nl 23 points 1 month ago

I think this is referring to electron microscopy, and å is a unit for 10^-10^ meters. Electron microscopy can be very noisy and it is hard to distinguish objects

[-] Stitch0815@feddit.org 3 points 1 month ago

Exactly this

This gets worse when talking about cryo EM

[-] wewbull@feddit.uk 2 points 1 month ago

Angstroms hurt my brain. A $10^{-10}$ of a metre, but not a nanometre or a picometre. Just...why?

[-] Hule@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

... However, they soon realized that the definition of the metre at the time, based on a material artifact, was not accurate enough for their work. So, around 1907 they defined their own unit of length, which they called "Ångström", based on the wavelength of a specific spectral line. It was only in 1960, when the metre was redefined in the same way, that the angstrom became again equal to 10^10 metre. Wikipedia

Edit: also some atoms are about 1 angstrom in size, so it's convenient, I guess..