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LIGHT CANNOT SEE ALL


EBOLA VIRUS


    Imagine  a huge ship standing in the ocean near the beach and also a football floating on the ocean waves.  The waves does not care the football.  That is, the waves are not at all disturbed by the ball.  But the waves are deflected and reflected by the ship.  So the ocean waves "sees" the ship because it is bigger than the wave.  But the waves are "blind" to the ball because it is smaller than the waves.  

     A virus or  a group of molecules are having the size in the order of nanometer(10^-9m).  But the wavelength of visible light is in the range of 10^-6 to 10^-8 m. .  Since light waves are bigger than virus like object, it cannot see them.  Hence the optical microscope fails in this region.



     So people turned to use other waves.  They found that the particle electron behaves like  waves.  Its wavelength is smaller than that of light (10^-10 m).  Hence electron microscope was built at very high cost.   Today we have variety of electron microscope.  Our knowledge expanded due to this microscope.  No doubt, the man will push the boundary further.      

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