Cal-tech professor, James Heath and colleagues made a great discovery as if by mistake. "Almost all surfaces have a coating of water on them." he says. But this layer is hard to study due to the face that water is in constant flux. This "mistake" was made when Heath and colleagues were studying graphene on an atomically flat surface of mica. They found nanoscale 'island-shaped' structures trapped between the graphene and the mica. They conducted other experiments because they thought the 'islands' were water. The graphene sheet was atomically conformal(it hugged the water molecules as if it was shrink wrap). The first layer of water on the mica was two water molecules thick. The second layer was two water molecules thick and was like ice. The third(top) layer was just droplets of water. Heath and colleagues are now working on improving the resolution of the device so that it may be used to see the atomic structure of biomolecules like antibodies and other proteins.
Self Evaluation: I think this story is really interesting because it just shows that there are new discoveries in science almost everyday. This accident has opened a wide variety of windows for being able to see the atomic structure of very minuscule things.
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