A nanoMicroscopy webLab facilitating
variable size and time scale adventures in group

* Note: If the Atmosphere Plug-in does not load after a few minutes, and there is only a blank screen, Adobe suggests downloading the viewpoint/atmosphere minimal installer, running it, and then trying again. A version of the lab for pre 8/12/2002 browsers may be found here.

From there a bit of exploration might lead you, for example, to the inside of an electron microscope column, onto the surface of some atomic force microscope specimens, into our cubic lattice workshop where you can try describing how lattices differ in your own terms, and to our silicon defect prototyping area where allies and adversaries of gigascale integrated circuit manufacture can be observed in vivo without the "flattening effects" of transmitted electron contrast. In some cases you may need a navigation restart from the right hand panel after turning gravity off, if a solid floor is not available or you walk off the edge of one. Also, expect bugs and glitches here or there, from us of course as well as from Adobe since the software is still in testing at least until January 2003.

One objective of the 3D construction here is ironically to facilitate "less mediated" experiences with natural phenomena, especially those occuring on size and/or time scales that are different from our own. Although for now most of the experiences are with models of natural environments, we expect that the future will allow interaction for example with real atoms (one at a time) through such interfaces as well. Suggestions are invited, as is information on links to "complementary construction". We hope to figure out ways to offer rewards to particularly observant explorers downstream, so visitors are encouraged to "take their Sherlock Holmes hat with them" when they explore and (hopefully) come back with questions and comments.

Also don't forget to "say hi" and in general show respect to other visitors that you run into while there. We hope that some pretty talented and knowledgeable guests will grace these environments from time to time (even if their outward appearance is that of Adobe's default avatar "tester"). If you are interested in tagging along on guided tours through the various fields of adventure, send us an e-mail or check back here later for a schedule. The number of visitors to any given world is I think limited to 20 at a time. We hope that you can expect major changes in functionality (hopefully for the better as far as file size, graphics acceleration, and interaction physics is concerned) in the months ahead. However, don't hold your breath for gravitational ray-tracing in the immediate future even though traversible wormholes (describable with a very simple metric) might serve as excellent paths from one world to the next.

Snapshots from recent visits below show...