Five Common Types of Microscopes and Their Uses
What is a microscope?
Microscopes are instruments that can be used to achieve an enlarged view of very small objects, even so far as cells. Objects or images are enlarged through the lenses of the technology, allowing the user to see them up close and often in extensive detail. There are many different types of microscopes that all work in different ways and serve different purposes, but on a general scale, they prove incredibly useful across various scientific fields and have been the crux of many important discoveries, particularly in medicine and biology as a whole.
Different types of microscopes work in different ways, each using reflective light and optical technology to generate magnified images of a sample. Different types also produce different types of images at different levels of magnification and can be used to fulfil different purposes. Here are some of the main types of microscopes, how they work and where they are most often used:
Stereo Microscopes
A stereoscopic microscope, also known as a dissecting microscope, is a type of optical microscope that uses lower powers of magnification (4-40x) and provides a three-dimensional view of the object being examined.
As per its name, this type of microscope is often used in dissecting specimens, as well as in microsurgery, watch-making and forensic engineering. They’re also often used for various other purposes like education, research, and metallurgical, industrial, and material science applications, fields where a UNITRON microscope has often proved particularly valuable.
Compound Light Microscopes
Unlike the stereo microscope, compound microscopes use higher powers of magnification (40x-1,000x) and are thus used to magnify far smaller objects which are typically not visible to the naked eye. This includes cells, bacteria, organelles, chromosomes and more. These microscopes are typically far more complex and more expensive since they offer a far more in-depth view of a sample.
This type of microscope operates with more than one lens, incorporates its own light source and has a compound medium in between which allows for the drastic magnifications. These microscopes are also commonly used to further scientific and technological research fields and will often be encountered in medical study.
Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM)
A scanning electron microscope (SEM) is a type of electron microscope that uses a beam of focused electrons (instead of light) to scan over the specimen in question. This scanning process produces signals which provide information about the topography, morphology and composition of the object.
This type of microscopy works more like photography than a stereo or compound light microscope, and renders high-resolution, three-dimensional images which can be used in various different industrial, commercial, and research applications. Some of these include biological and medical sciences, micro-chip assembly, forensics, and environmental sampling.
Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM)
Where a scanning electron microscope uses a beam of electrons to scan across the top of the specimen in question, a transmission electron microscope (TEM) allows the beam to pass through the sample instead, in order to generate a three-dimensional image.
TEM’s are technically complex and expensive pieces of technology because they allow for extremely high levels of magnification, even illuminating atomic arrangements within a sample. This type of microscope is typically reserved for more demanding scientific work and research and won’t typically be made available to students. TEM’s have been used to make great advancements in the fields of nanotechnology, medical and biological sciences, biological research, material research, gemology, and metallurgy.
Metallurgical Microscopes
Though perhaps similar in looks to a compound microscope, this type of microscope is designed specifically to work with objects which do not allow light to pass through them, such as metals, ceramics and other such materials. They make use of optical and illumination systems in order to generate an image of the specimen by reflecting light down through objective lenses (similarly to a stereo microscope) and magnifying the sample by up to 500x.
Metallurgical microscopes are most commonly used by metallurgists within the aerospace industry and the automobile manufacturing industry, due to their ability to work with those very specific materials. There are different types of metallurgical microscopes that will serve different functions, including upright and inverted microscopes.
Overall, all types of microscopes regardless of their functionality and the fields within which they are used, are advancing research on massive scales. Scientists are using this technology to make breakthroughs in medicine, nanotechnology, biological sciences and various other fields, and the use of microscopes in schools is also extremely beneficial for young students with curious minds – spurring on the future generation of scientists.
