Optical Microscopy

The optical microscope (also as light microscope) is a type of microscope that commonly uses visible light and a system of lenses to generate magnified images of small objects. A range of objective lenses with different magnification are usually provided mounted on a turret, allowing them to be rotated into place and providing an ability to zoom-in. The maximum magnification power of optical microscopes is typically limited to around 1000x because of the limited resolving power of visible light. The magnification of a compound optical microscope is the product of the magnification of the eyepiece (say 10x) and the objective lens (say 100x), to give a total magnification of 1,000×.

Application Area

Optical microscopy is used extensively in:

• metallurgy
• microelectronics
• biotechnology
• microbiology
• pharmaceutic research
• mineralogy