Wednesday, 12 September 2012

Microscope



Microscope and its development
A microscope is an instrument used to see objects that are too small for the naked eye. The science of investigating small objects using such an instrument is called microscopy. Microscopic means invisible to the eye unless aided by a microscope.
There are many types of microscopes, the most common and first to be invented is the optical microscope which uses light to image the sample. Other major types of microscopes are the electron microscope (both the transmission electron microscope and the scanning electron microscope) and the various types of scanning probe microscope.
A  microscope is an instrument that produces a clear magnified image of an object viewed through it. A  microscope must be able not only to magnify objects sufficiently but also to resolve, or separate, the fine details of the object that are of interest to the viewer. In the optical microscope visible light rays, reflected from or transmitted by the viewed object, pass through a series of lenses and form an enlarged image of the object. This image is produced at the normal distance of clearest vision, which is about 10 inches, or 25 centimetres, from the eye of the viewer.
The degree to which the fine details of an object can be resolved is limited by the wavelength of the light that is used. Thus, finer details can be resolved if ultraviolet light is used instead of visible light, and even more detail can be resolved by using X rays. The greatest magnification and resolution are provided by the electron microscope. In this device a beam of electrons is used instead of rays of visible light for examining the object.

The basic form of microscope is the simple optical
 microscope. It consists of a single convex lens, or magnifying glass, or of a combination of lenses that has the same effect. The compound microscope, which is the most common type of optical microscope, consists of two separate lens systems. Each system is a simple  microscope and may be either a single lens or a group of lenses. The object being viewed is placed close to one lens system, called the objective, which forms an image, called the primary image. This image in turn is the object that is magnified by the second system of lenses, called the eyepiece. The image seen by the eye is produced by the eyepiece at the normal distance of clearest vision.




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