The Science Department are very fortunate to have secured a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) on loan from the Natural History Museum in London.
This type of machine can generate images of objects magnified by many thousands times greater than regular microscopes and is usually only available to universities and private research labs. Students have been trained to operate the machine and its versatility means it is being used to collect data for a number of their own STEM-based projects and collaborations with The John Wallis Church of England Academy.
This includes an investigation into the effect of different treatments on hair structure, as well as finally getting a glimpse of the fibres that have been generated by the nanospinning project, which would otherwise be invisible to even our most powerful optical microscope. The black and white images come from these two projects, can you work out which one’s which?