Microscopes

Microscopes were invented by Anton van Leeuwenhoek. He dicovered lots of new animals and plants as well as bacteria just by looking into a micrscope. He studied blood cells and how they move and even the life cycle of insects. Because of all the wonderful work he did he was often reffered to as 'the father of microscopy'.

Microscopes are very clever. They use the same reflecting mathod as teloscopes. It's all about bending the light. In a telescope, the idea is to bend parallel light from very faraway objects into a small focus at the eye. In a microscope, the idea is to bend diverging (spreading-out) light into a parallel path, then bend that parallel-path light into a small focus at the eye. Like this.

Whats Happening?

If you want to look at something through a microscope this is what you should do.

1. First you have to mount what you want to look at on a glass slide. It's pretty easy and doesn't need explaining.
2. Light up the object. This can be done by putting a mirror underneath the object. The mirror reflects the light and sends it up the microscope giving light.
3. Then look through the eye piece lense and you can see your object clearly.

Every microscope has a diffrent zoom. It is normally written somwhere on the microscope. For example 40 means the object is 40x bigger than in real life.