microscopy

• Microscopy


  The study of things that cannot be seen with the naked eye using microscopes
• Light microscopes


  • Use light and lenses to form an image of a specimen and magnify it (make it look bigger)
• Electron microscopes


  • Use electrons instead of light to form an image
  • Have a much higher magnification than light microscopes
  • Have higher resolution (ability to distinguish between two points, so a higher resolution gives a sharper image)
• What electron microscopes let us see

  • Internal structure of mitochondria and chloroplasts
  • Ribosomes and plasmids
• Calculating magnification


  Magnification = image size / real size
• Image size and real size should have the same units
• Standard form


  Writing very big or small numbers with lots of zeros in a more manageable way, e.g. 0.017 can be written as 1.7 x 10^-2