Bigger, clearer, easier to tell apart
A microscope improves three things, not one.
A blurry photograph
You zoom into a photo until it is huge. But it is now blurry. Zooming made it bigger, not clearer.
Which feature of a microscope is like “clearness”?
What this lesson covers
The idea
A light microscope uses visible light and a combination of lenses, an objective lens and an eyepiece, to magnify objects; its three main features are magnification, resolution (clarity) and contrast (difference in brightness between parts).
A blurry photograph
You zoom into a photo until it is huge. But it is now blurry. Zooming made it bigger, not clearer.
Which feature of a microscope is like “clearness”?
- Magnification
- Resolution
- Contrast
Tune a microscope
Change the three sliders. Watch what each one does to the cell.
Three features
A light microscope uses visible light and lenses, an objective lens and an eyepiece, to magnify. Its three main features are magnification (how big), resolution (clarity) and contrast (difference in brightness between parts).
In a school laboratory we use different objective lenses, for example 10× and 40×.
- Feature | What it does
- Magnification | makes the image bigger
- Resolution | keeps close points apart, so it looks clear
- Contrast | makes parts differ in brightness
Notes
A microscope’s three main features are magnification (bigger), resolution (clearer) and contrast (parts differ in brightness).
Check yourself
Which feature tells us how clear (sharp) the image is?
Contrast is…
A picture is 40 times bigger, but blurry. Which feature is poor?
A light microscope has an objective lens and an…
- Resolution — correct. Yes. Resolution is a measure of clarity.
- Magnification. That is only how big.
- Contrast. That is the difference in brightness.
- the difference in brightness between parts of the object — correct. Yes.
- how many times bigger the image is. That is magnification.
- how clearly two close points are separated. That is resolution.
- Resolution — correct. Yes. It is big, but not clear.
- Magnification. It is already large.
- Both are fine. A blurry picture means resolution is poor.
- eyepiece — correct. Yes. The two lenses together magnify.
- electron. That is a different kind of microscope.
- ear piece. The part you look into is the eyepiece.