A Close-up Look at White-Speck Neps in Cotton

Materials engineer Patricia Bel-Berger and chemists Bill Goynes (center) and Eugene Blanchard examine scanning electron micrographs (SEMs) that show the structure of a white-speck nep. Laundry equipment has come a long way since the Maytag Gyrofoam rescued our great-grandmothers from labor-intensive agitators and wringers in 1922. As washing technology has advanced, so have the tools of textile science. Take microscopes as a case in point. The scanning electron microscope (SEM) was developed in 1942 and has been commercially available since the early 1960s. It uses electrons to scan a sample's surface and form images, in much the same way a television does. This microscope allows researchers to look at fiber samples three-dimensionally, providing valuable information about morphological structure. used an SEM to confirm that small, undyeable clumps of cotton fibers—known in the textile industry as white-speck neps--are the result of underdeveloped cotton. Goynes is a chemist in the Cotton Fiber Quality Research Unit (SRRC) in New Orleans, Louisiana. His finding proved what researchers had suspected since the 1940s. For under an SEM, white-speck neps appeared as mats of ribbonlike material, giving researchers proof of