This video, via Applied Science, takes a look at what vinyl LP grooves look like under an electron microscope.
Host Ben Krasnow.shows how he how he made a stop-motion animation of a phonograph needle in an LP groove, using an electron microscope.
Electronic microscopes use electrons as the source of ‘illumination’ vs visible light and can achieve much higher magnifications as a result (10,000,000 times vs around 2,000 times magnificiation.)
Note: While Krasnow uses Switched On Bach to illustrate what he’s doing in the video, he later revealed in his comments on the video that he couldn’t actually bring himself to cut up the album, so he sliced up an old Strauss LP instead!
Check it out and let us know what you think!
WoW! Brilliant
that’s super interesting!
That was really interesting, especially all the practical information on how he achieved these results. What would happen if you looked at a hard-disk?
Not sure you’d see anything on an HD except a flat surface. The information is stored as tiny invisible magnetic charges, not as a physical groove or pit.
Very informative! Even ‘digital’ formats like CD have a very tangible component at these resolutions, really interesting to see the shapes of the binary imprint.