Bond Order Goes under the Microscope

The 2012 Sept 17 issue of Chemistry & Engineering News ("C&ENews" is what we call it) begins with an article, Bond Order via Microscopy. A team of scientists at IBM's Zurich research center used a scanning probe microscope to investigate electric fields in a large flat aromatic molecule. The images they generate look surprisingly like the bond pattern in the molecule. If you want to get even closer to this project, check out their research publication and microscope images in the 2012 Sept 14 issue of Science magazine.