Two decades after its invention, scanning probe microscopy has become a widely used method in laboratories as diverse as industrial magnetic stor­ age development or structural biology. Consequently, the community of users ranges from biologists and medical researchers to physicists and engineers, all of them exploiting the unrivalled resolution and profiting from the relative simplicity of the experimental implementation. In recent years the authors have taught numerous courses on scanning probe microscopy, normally in combination with hands-on student experi­ ments. The audiences ranged...