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Optical microscopy is a technique for closely observing samples by magnifying the lens with visible light. This is the microscope. It was the first traditional form invented before the 18th century, and it is still in use today.

Optical microscopes are sometimes called optical microscopes, which use one or a series of lenses to magnify images of small samples with visible light. The lens is placed between the sample and the observer's eye to magnify the image so that it can be inspected in more detail.

Types of optical microscopes

There are many types of optical microscopes. They can range from very basic designs to high complexity that provides higher resolution and contrast. Some types of optical microscopes include:

Simple microscope: A single lens similar to a magnifying glass used to magnify the image of the sample.

Compound microscope: A series of lenses that can magnify the sample image to a higher resolution, which is more commonly used in modern research.

Digital microscope: May have simple or compound lenses, but use a computer to visualize the image without using eyepieces to view the sample.

Stereo microscope: Provides stereo images, which can be used for anatomy.

Comparison microscope: You can observe two different samples at the same time, one for each eye.

Inverted microscope: View the sample from below, which is very useful for checking liquid cell culture.

Other types of optical microscopes include petrography, polarized light, phase contrast, epi-fluorescence and confocal microscopes.

Optical microscopes can use standard light-sensitive cameras to generate photomicrographs. Traditionally, photographic film is used to capture images.

Technological development has now enabled the use of CMOS and optical microscope charge-coupled device (CCD) cameras to capture digital images. As a result, images can be projected onto a computer screen in real time to examine samples with these digital microscopes. Since the eyepiece is no longer needed, the convenience of use is increased.

The magnification capability of a compound optical microscope depends on the eyepiece and objective lens. It is equal to the product of the optical powers of these lenses (for example, for a 10x eyepiece and a 100x objective lens used together, the final magnification is 1000x.)

Operations, applications and restrictions

In order to use an optical microscope effectively, it is important to ensure that the microscope is set up correctly.

The objective lens should be close to the study sample to allow light to enter the microscope tube. This creates a magnified, inverted image of the sample, which can be viewed through the eyepiece of the microscope.

Optical microscopes are commonly used in many research fields, including microbiology, microelectronics, nanophysics, biotechnology, and pharmaceutical research. It may also be useful to look at biological samples for medical diagnosis (called histopathology).

In some cases, due to technical limitations, optical microscopes are not well adapted to current tasks. For example, at very high magnification, you can see ventilated disks, which are fuzzy disks surrounded by diffraction rings, which replace the point objects.

When the limitations of optical microscopes are great, other types of microscopes may be more useful.

Other types of microscopes

There are several other types of microscopes that can be used as alternatives to optical microscopes. These include:

scanning electron microscope

Transmission electron microscope

Fluorescence microscope

atomic force microscope

Scanning ion conductance microscope

Scanning tunneling microscope

UV microscope

X-ray microscope

Unlike optical microscopes, these types of microscopes do not use visible light to view samples.