Microscopes and Microscopy

Microscopes and Microscopy Introduction The purpose for including a lab on microscopy in his course is because it is a very important tool in making detailed observations. This lab helps the average person realize that there is much more to things than what you see with the naked eye. In the field of human biology microscopes are very important for many reasons. In the late 1500’s a scientist named Zacharias Janssen created the first microscope of it kind and now we have several microscopes that are very important to the study of human biology. The compound microscope is used to view individual cells as well as living cells such as hair. Electron microscopes can be used to view things such as biological tissues and organisms. Also, another popular microscope used in human biology is the stereo microscope, which is commonly used to dissect and examine human tissue. Discussion When studying the â€Å"optics† slide in the interactive section of this lab it displayed image orientation. To display this it took the letter â€Å"e† and showed you the standard view to the naked eye and then it showed you the view through a light microscope and it looked very different. The â€Å"e† was upside down and backwards left while looking down in the microscope. The reason it looked like this was because of the shape and lenses in the microscope. While studying the color threads on the interactive microscope you notice that the colors are red, green, and yellow from top to bottom. The magnification that was useful in helping me determine the order was 400x. This magnification allowed me to see that the yellow color thread was on the bottom and that the green color thread was in the middle. The optical principles that are in play here are perfect lens characteristic and transmitted light microscopy optical pathways. Interpupillary distance is the distance between the centers of the pupils of the two eyes. The way to determine what the interpupillary distance is with a device called a pupil meter. This device presents a binocular subject that can be set from a close viewing distance out to optical infinity. The diopter setting is a control knob on a microscope that helps your eyes view something similar in proper relation instead of allowing each individual eye to view the subject differently. It is necessary to locate an object using the low objective because it allows you to gain a better focus before switching to the high power objective and makes it so you don’t have to make much of an adjustment on the high power objective. Just trying to focus using the high power objective could get very time consuming. Reducing the iris diaphragm aperture on a microscope will clarify an image focused under high power, but it would be letting less light in the field of view. The reason it would clarify the image is because under high power it doesn’t take much light to bring whatever you are viewing into focus due to the strength of the lens. If my lab partner was having problems locating onion cells using a parfocal microscope with the low power objective and just switched to the high power objective I would tell her that this is an incorrect way to bring the onion cells into focus. I would advise her that she would need to continue to bring the onion cell into focus with the low power objective because once you have it in focus with the low power objective you can switch to the high power objective with out making any changes to the focus. I am striving to become a nurse and I believe that in that career field it is extremely important for me to be especially knowledgeable regarding microscopy. While working as a nurse it is going to be extremely important for me to know what microscopes are going to be best to use in certain circumstances. For my career field it is going to be very important to understand how to use a microscope and that goes for knowing how to bring cells into more focus as well as knowing that I need to bring what I am viewing into focus under the low power objective.