PEMC At Spring Fest

Join us for a day of fun for the whole family!  Spring Fest is a celebration of flora and fauna, mixing fun and education that will delight the young, and the young at heart.  This year, the Purdue Electron Microscopy Center has a tent for the first time!  Come join us in Tent #10 in front of Smith Hall to see what bugs and pollen look like in an electron microscope.  We are right next to the Bug Bowl, so we will do our best to match their enthusiasm for insects, arachnids, and all the other creepy crawlies!  The electron microscopes (EM) in the Purdue Electron Microscopy Center are too big to bring with us to a tent, but this year, Semplor has been kind enough to bring a desktop scanning electron microscope (SEM) to the tent, so you can have hands-on experience with an electron microscope!

Why electron microscopes?

Bugs and flowers look pretty neat just with the naked eye.  Put them under a magnifying glass and you start to see more clearly.  Then under a light microscope, some hints of intricate detail start to appear.  Want an even closer look?  That is where electron microscopy comes in!  Take a close look at a bee stinger, see the hair on a bug's leg, inspect the structure of a butterfly wing, take a glance at the eye of a fly!  See the texture of rose petals, observe the stomata on plant leaves that allow them to breathe, realize just how many different shapes pollen can take!  All of these things are easy to see in an electron microscope—in fact, to an electron microscope, all of those things are huge!   

We are looking forward to introducing you all to the teeny-tiny world of electron microscopy.  See you there!