Seeing is Believing! Outreach with the wonders of electron microscopes

Early Stage Researchers Steph Foster, Martha Ilett, Jo Galloway and Experimental Officer Zabeada Aslam participated in the Be Curious Live 2023 festival at the University of Leeds on 13 May, which showcases the research undertaken at Leeds via interactive and engaging activities for children and families. They helped run the "Seeing is Believing" stall, using a benchtop SEM (scanning electron microscope) to fascinate attendees with the microstructure of various bugs. The children and their families were invited to see for themselves the nanostructures on the delicate wings of a butterfly under a light microscope, before taking a guess at the sample in the SEM from high magnification images - spider, wasp or fly? On the whole it was a great day, with as many as 1,600 people attending!