The following, inserted into the preamble, defines two new environments, tablehere andfigurehere, which insert tables and figures inline with the column text.
More Info
% Figures within a column... \makeatletter \newenvironment{tablehere} {\def\@captype{table}} {} \newenvironment{figurehere} {\def\@captype{figure}} {} \makeatotherIn addition to this, you'll probably need to scale graphics to the column width. This can be achieved with the \resizebox command inside a figure or our new figurehereenvironment. For example,
\begin{figurehere} \centering \resizebox{\columnwidth}{!}{\includegraphics{gf-graphs.eps}} \caption{\label{gf-graphs}Graph showing applied RF frequency against magnetic field from the sweep coils, the gradient of the lines reveals information about $g_f$ for each isotope. The left gradient, corresponding to \chem{^{85}{Rb}} is $7.73 \times 10^9 (\pm 1.5 \times 10^8)$. The right gradient, corresponding to \chem{^{87}{Rb}}, is $5.24 \times 10^9 (\pm 6.00 \times 10^7)$ } \end{figurehere}
More Info