Chemist Ahmed Zewail literally filmed chemical bonds violently ripping apart in real-time by blasting molecules with a femtosecond laser strobe light that flashes at an…

A closer look

How do you catch an atom in the exact moment it decides to break up with its partner? Chemical reactions happen far too fast for any traditional camera. Ahmed Zewail won the Nobel Prize by inventing femtochemistry, a technique that uses ultra-short laser pulses as a high-speed strobe light. By hitting a molecule with a 'pump' pulse to trigger a reaction, and a subsequent 'probe' pulse to measure it a femtosecond later, he successfully captured the terrifyingly fast transitional states of molecules snapping their bonds apart in glorious slow motion.