Thomas Thundat's first job at Tennessee's Oak Ridge National Laboratory wasn't exactly a glamorous start. When Thundat arrived in 1991, fresh from postdoctoral training, he was put to work in a dank bomb shelter that had been converted into a lab. His task was to use an atomic force microscope to get a "snapshot" of the DNA molecule. All he seemed to be getting, though, was a headache. The microscope, which detects the con-tours of molecules by dragging a flexible sliver of coated silicon over them, was malfunctioning. After puzzling through his problem for months, Thundat realized one rainy day during...
Beyond The Sixth Sense
How can you tell what's in the air? In a suitcase? In your blood? Meet science's detection pioneers
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