A microscope is an instrument used to produce a magnified image of a specimen. A microscope consists of an eyepiece lens, a nosepiece …show more content…
The specimen was focussed by lowering the stage using the course focus and placing the prepared slide of the specimen on the stage and fixing it in place using the stage clips. The course focus was then used to raise the stage towards the lens and adjusted until a clear image of the specimen was viewed. The fine focus was similarly used to further refine the image and produce a more resolute image of the specimen. Observations were then recorded in the form of an annotated diagram.
The magnification of the specimen occurred due to the multiple biconvex lenses within the light microscope. As the light is passed through the thin specimen, it passes through the objective lenses and the light refracts, creating a magnified image. The light then passes through the eyepiece lens, which further magnifies the image by 10 times and produces an enlarged image of the specimen. The total magnification of the specimen can be found by multiplying the magnification of the eyepiece lens and the objective lens together. eg.10 ×40=total magnification of …show more content…
Part D of the experiment required using a Minigrid slide to measure the field of view (FOV – how much of a specimen can be viewed in the lateral plane) at each of the magnification objectives. A Minigrid slide consists of a centred 10mm x 10mm square divided into squares set at 1.0mm intervals. In the center of the grid is a second series of smaller squares set at 0.1mm intervals.
It was observed that as the magnification increases, the field of view decreases – making magnification inversely proportional to the FOV. This proportion is important in the field of microscopy because observations below 100µm (0.1mm) cannot be made with the unaided human eye, so the aid of a microscope is needed.
Part E involved preparing a slide of bare epidermal onion tissue as well as stained with Methylene blue solution and observation at the highest magnification objective. Methylene blue solution is used to stain animal and plant cells to allow the visibility of the nucleus. The staining of the onion tissue and allowed a more detailed observation of the onion’s epidermal tissue cells, but due to too little of the stain used, the observed tissue had a minimal difference to the unstained