Beetle - Up close and personal.

When my daughter was about a year old, I picked up a beautiful book on electron microscopy called Hidden Worlds. I knew that she was too young for it at the time, but we would pull it out now and again to look at the pictures. She seemed to think they were pretty, and that was about the extent of it.

A few months ago I came across it again and added it to the pile of books for the bedtime read. She flipped through the stack and stopped when she came across this volume. Grasping the book in two hands she intently stared at the cover image for long seconds.

Without taking her eyes of the book, she whispered:

"Tell me about these things."


I mentioned this to a colleague of mine at the museum who is our curator of micropaleontology and resident SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope) wrangler. He graciously offered for us to bring in an insect to view with his scope.

When we arrived, he had us look at out collection using a binocular microscope so we might choose what we wanted to look at with the SEM. We had been amassing a collection of dead bugs in an old ice-cube tray, and had quite a rogues gallery to choose from. The Girl picked what I felt was one of our more lackluster specimens - a rather dull beetle of the june-buggish variety.

After determining tha the beetle was in fact dead and quite dry, the good doctor mounted the beetle to a small stage - a device similar in appearance to a fat pointless thumbtack. This was accomplished using a carbon-based electrically conductive double-sticky tape.


The mounted beetle was placed in a small glass chamber onto a mechanism of gears, rollers and chains. The vessel was sealed shut and a small vacuum pump energized. We waited long minutes while the air was evacuated from the chamber. When the air was sufficiently gone, a switch was flipped and the gears were set in motion, both rotating and tilting the beetle simultaneously. After a second switch was flipped a soft violet light appeared as electrons jumped from the top of the jar to the bottom, passing over the spinning insect. The electrode emitting the beam is made from a thin foil disk of Gold/Palladium alloy, which is slowly being vaporized in the process. The vaporized particles deposit on the beetle, eventually building up a shiny silvery layer a scant 10 atoms thick.

Once the plating of the insect is complete, the pump is turned off and the chamber is equalized to room pressure, allowing it to be opened. The small stage with it's metallic passenger is transferred to the SEM. It is placed upon a small device that will allow it to be rotated, tilted, and moved closer to the detector using a joystick. The door is shut, and another round of pumping begins.

After the specimen is under a vacuum, the electron beam is energized and we get our first look at the beetle. What was to our unaided eyes a drab lump of an insect is revealed to be a staggeringly complex multitude of plates, barbs, hairs and other features I could not begin to name.


We spent over an hour exploring this strange beast. What was once pedestrian was now surreal, and we could never look at a June Bug the same way again.