Answer to Question #162615 in Optics for Samychou

Question

Give a detailed description of the optical system of the compound microscope.

Answer 1

All optical microscopes share the same basic components:

• The eyepiece or ocular - a cylinder containing two or more lenses to bring the image to focus for the eye. The eyepiece is inserted into the top end of the body tube. Eyepieces are interchangeable and many different eyepieces can be inserted with different magnifications. Typical values for eyepieces include X5, X10 and X20. In some high performance microscopes, the optics of the objective and eypiece are matched to give the best possible optical performance. This occurs most commonly with apochromatic objectives
• The objective lens - a cylinder containing one or more lenses to collect light from the sample. At the lower end of the microscope tube one or more objective lenses are screwed into a circular nose piece which may be rotated to select the required objective lens. Typical values of objectives are x5, x10, x20, x40, x80 and x100. Some high performance objectives may require matched eyepieces to deliver the best optical performance.

More modern microscopes may have many more features, including transmission/reflection illumination, filters, apparatus for phase contrast microscopy and differential interference microscopy, digital cameras, etc.