If you’re starting your PhD or post-doctoral work, chances are you’ll need to use a light microscope at some stage during your research. Some of you may be seasoned microscopists. For many of you though, this might be the first time you’ve ever plugged in a microscope, or at least the first time you’ve used one since some long-forgotten undergraduate histology course. Yet somehow you’re expected to just dust off that old ‘scope in the corner of the lab, and start using it as if you’re an old hand. Have no fear – help is at hand! In today’s article, I’m going to go over the basics of the light microscope. Show The anatomy of the light microscopeTo begin with, I’d like to introduce you to the parts of the microscope – basically the bits that might be useful for you to know about. No optical physics required!
Viewing your slidesOK, so now that you know all the parts of the microscope, let’s look at your first slide. What do you do first?
Hopefully, this overview has taken some of the mystery out of using your lab’s ancient light microscope. It can be a nightmare if you’re faced with using a microscope for the first time, but following these few, easy steps should ease the pain a little! What are your tips for using a light microscope? Image Credit: What part of the microscope controls brightness?Iris Diaphragm: A rotating disc under the stage that controls the intensity of light hitting the specimen.
What illuminates the slide on a microscope?The substage condenser gathers light from the microscope light source and concentrates it into a cone of light that illuminates the specimen with uniform intensity over the entire viewfield.
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