Microscopy

• How to View a Specimen Using a Light Microscope

  1. Your specimen needs to let light through so you'll need to take a thin slice of it to start with

  2. Next take a glass slide and use a pipette to put one drop of water in the middle of it

  3. Carefully place your specimen on the slide

  4. Add a drop of stain to make the specimen more transparent or colourful

  5. Place the slide on the stage, holding it at an angle with a pair of tweezers and carefully lower it onto the stage

  6. Select the correct objective lens

  7. Use the coarse adjustment knob to move the stage up so the slide is just underneath the objective lens

  8. Then use the fine adjustment knob to focus the image
• Microscope


  • Has eyepieces
  • Has objective lenses (high and low power)
  • Has a stage to hold the slide
  • Has adjustment knobs to focus the image
• Your microscope might look a bit different, the appearance of light microscopes can vary, some might have two eyepieces rather than one
• If your field of view (FOV) was 5 mm, then the actual size of the specimen is less than 10 mm, if your FOV is 10 mm, the actual size of the specimen will be 0.5 mm