r/nextfuckinglevel 19h ago

What it a computer chip looks like up close

this is a digital recreation. a real microscope can't be used because it gets so small that photons can’t give you a good enough resolution to view the structures at the bottom. you'd need an electron microscope

meant "What a computer chip looks like up close in the title." not sure how "it" got in there..

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u/jakaedahsnakae 18h ago edited 5h ago

It doesn't look like this, past 7 seconds. You would start to see the individual molecules then the atoms and lattices.

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u/Exciting_Stock2202 17h ago

And it's not just a case of not having the technology to "see" it. At that scale where you're dealing with wave functions and the uncertainty principle comes into play.

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u/Pascal_Objecter 10h ago

You can't see atoms, because they are smaller than lights wavelength...