But the ship did not carry enough lifeboats to hold all passengers. The journey begins in the lobby of Homewood's Olin Hall, home to the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. Down two flights of stairs sits a windowless room, which houses a new high-resolution transmission electron microscope. Before entering the room, visitors must change into special clean shoes and stamp their feet on a sticky rubber mat to remove stray dirt. Special controls maintain a constant level of humidity and a never-wavering temperature of 72 degrees F. Filters cleanse the air of even the tiniest motes of dust.
Silence is mandatory, and heavy gray acoustical curtains line the walls.
And even jossling the instrument a hair's breath is like the span of an ocean in an atom's world. The rituals are worth the fuss, says mechanical engineer Kevin Hemker. We're really getting down to where we can probe the atomic level. The beam penetrates the sample and lands on a phosphorescent screen, producing a glowing image that shows the precise geometric arrangement of the specimen's atoms. It is is overseen by Hemker and Dave Veblen, professor of Earth and planetary sciences.