Lab Manual - eScience Labs

Lab 4: Introducon to the Microscope
Concepts to explore:
• Types of microscopes
• Parts of a microscope
• How to use a microscope
• Preparing a wet mount slide
• Depth of field
Introducon
Some objects are far too small to be seen with the human eye. However, by using a microscope many
can be viewed in great detail. There are many types of microscopes that range from low–level magnificaon
(i.e., hand-held magnificaon lens) to very high-power magnificaon (i.e., an electron microscope).
In the middle of that range lies the light microscope, or for our purposes, the compound light
microscope, which uses mulple lenses.
The compound light microscope (Figure 1) has two sets of lenses:
• the ocular lenses (close to your eyes)
• the objecve lenses (close to the “object” on the stage).
Along with a light source, these lenses work together to magnify the object being viewed. In the case
of the compound light microscope, the total magnificaon is equal to the magnificaon power of the
ocular lens mulplied by the magnificaon power of the objecve lens. For example, if the ocular lens
magnifies 10X (this means 10 mes) and the objecve lens magnifies 10X, the total magnificaon is
100X.
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