Remote Access to Scientific Instruments

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by BillDayson, Feb 23, 2003.

Loading...
  1. BillDayson

    BillDayson New Member

    I understand that means now exist for DL astronomy students to obtain remote access to telescopes. Apparently Western Sydney's masters program in astronomy uses this approach.

    Well, here is an attempt to do the same thing with electron (scanning and transmission) and other kinds of exotic microscopes.

    http://www.csuhayward.edu/SCI/sem/remote.html

    Frankly, I wonder how they do it.

    I took a transmission electron microscopy course at Cal Poly in the early seventies. The technology at that time invoved embedding specimins in epoxy resin, curing it in ovens, slicing extremely-thin sections with an ultramicrotome, placing the sections on a wire grid in the microscope, pumping the microscope down to a vacuum, taking photographs and developing them ourselves in an adjoining darkroom.

    The point is that it was a laborious process that required a lot of hands-on technique, particlarly getting sections of suitable uniform thinness with the ultramicrotome.

    I have trouble imagining that all of that has been automated in the last twenty years.

    But I guess that technicians could do that kind of laboratory preparation work with the material that DL students sent them, and then let the student select, shoot and download digitized images from/to a remote site. The point wouldn't be to train the remote student to be a skilled electron microscopist, but simply to allow them to access the instrument for their own research purposes.
     

Share This Page