Carnegie Mellon University School of Art senior Lisa Huyett has created a large-scale installation titled “S.E.M. Rose” (Scanning Electron Microscope Rose), a re-creation of the surface of a rose petal, at the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh. The artist rendered the magnified image of a rose petal using a scanning electron microscope while a student in the university’s interdisciplinary Art and Biology course.
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Scanning electron microscopy uses a beam of electrons to reveal the nanostructures of material surfaces at up to one million times their normal size. Under the guidance of Joseph Suhan, electron microscopist at the Electron Microscope Facility in the university’s Mellon College of Science, Huyett magnified a rose petal 500 times, revealing bristly, knob-like structures that make up the velvety appearance of the petal.