2 November 2011 - Mike Capers looks into the electron microscope

On November 2 our speaker was Mike Capers. Mike left school wanting to be a scientist and spent the next 7 years at Brighton Polytechnic taking a degree in Applied Physics followed by a Ph.D.

He arrived at Reading University in 1969 where his thesis and postdoctoral research depended very much on the use of the electron microscope, which was the subject of his very interesting talk to us.

Mike started with passing us copies of 8 pictures from an electron microscope for us to guess what they were. These varied from head lice to Velcro threads and loops. He explained that the optical microscope could magnify up to 100 times but the electron microscope could magnify up to 10,000,000 times.