Written by microscopewebring on May 11th,
2007 in Microscope Webring.
Modified by Mrs. Jones
The compound microscope is also called the light microscope. It takes advantage of using light and uses its lenses to magnify or to enlarge the image of its specimen. For greater magnifying abilities, it has two systems of lenses. The compound or optical microscope has more or less eleven parts.
The first part is the eyepiece lens. This is the lens that the person can look through as he examines the specimen. They usually have a magnifying power of 10 times to 15 times. The tube is the next microscope part. It is responsible for connecting the eyepiece to the objective lens. The objective lens is the lens near the specimen examined with the microscope. The arm is the third part. The arm is the part that supports the tube. It connects the tube to the base of the microscope. The base is another part. It is another name for the bottom of the microscope. It is used to support the entire equipment. The illuminator is the next part. It functions as a steady light source. Some microscopes have mirrors that have a similar purpose. The mirror is utilized to reflect light that comes from a source outside of the microscope itself. The mirror beams the light up through the bottom of the stage. The sixth part of the microscope is called the stage. The stage refers to the flat platform part of the microscope that serves as the space where you put the slides with the mounted specimen. What holds the slide in place is called the stage clip. There are two stage clips that do this, holding the slide on each of its ends.
The next part of the microscope is called the nosepiece. This is the microscope part that can hold two or more objective lenses. This part can be easily rotated to change the magnifying power of the microscope quickly. The objective lens is the next important microscopic part. This is the lens closest to the mounted specimen being studied on the microscope. Usually, in a single microscope, you could see 3 to 4 objective lenses. They usually come in 4 times, 10 times, 40 times and 100 times magnification powers. Since the eyepiece of the microscope also has magnifying powers the magnifying capacity would be the result of multiplying the objective power to the eyepiece power. The objective lenses come in different lengths. The shortest lens has the lowest magnifying power. The longest one has the highest magnifying capacity. The fine and coarse adjustment knobs are used to focus the image of the specimen. The last part is the iris. The iris is also called the diaphragm. It has holes of different sizes and its use is to vary the intensity and the size of the cone light that is being beamed or projected upward towards the slide with the specimen.