Use of the Scanning Tunneling Microscope in University Teaching - didactic potential and restrictions

The use of the Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM) in university teaching allows for both a very easy access to the atomic and electronic structure of solids and to gain insight into various, sometimes hardly comprehensible, physico-chemical phenomena like the quantum mechanical tunneling effect. The new generation of easy-to-use STMs, specially designed for teaching purposes, allows self-operation and data-analysis by interested university students. The present manuscript critically discusses the possibilities of STM in university teaching, but also gives an outlook to the use in high-school teaching.