How many types of microscope?

Microscopes are classified based on microscopy principles and can be divided into polarizing microscopes, optical microscopes, electron microscopes, and digital microscopes.

There are many types of optical microscopes, including bright field microscopes (ordinary optical microscopes), dark field microscopes, fluorescence microscopes, phase contrast microscopes, laser scanning confocal microscopes, polarizing microscopes, differential interference contrast microscopes, and inverted microscopes.

Polarizing microscope

Polarizing microscope: It is a microscope used to study the so-called transparent and opaque anisotropic materials. It has important applications in science and engineering such as geology.

Compound microscope

The compound microscope can also mentioned as a biological microscope. Compound microscopes are usually use in laboratories, schools, and for histology and pathology. The samples viewed under the biological microscope prepared on a slide employing a cover glass to flatten the sample. Students will often view prepared slides under the microscope to save lots of time by eliminating the slide preparation process.

Stereo microscope

Stereo microscopes are wont to check out a spread of samples that you would be ready to hold in your hand. A stereo microscope provides a 3D image or “stereo” image and will provide magnification between 10x – 40x. The stereo microscope was employed in manufacturing, internal control, numismatics, science, for top school dissection projects, and botany. A stereo microscope typically provides both transmitted and reflected illumination and may be wont to view a sample which will not allow light to undergo it.

Inverted microscopes

Inverted microscopes are available as biological inverted microscopes or metallurgical inverted microscopes. Biological inverted microscopes provide magnification of 40x, 100x and sometimes 200x and 400x. These biological inverted microscopes are wont to view living samples that are during a Petri dish. An inverted microscope allows the user to put the Petri dish on a flat stage, with the target lenses housed beneath the stage. Inverted microscopes are used for in-vitro fertilization, live cell imaging, developmental biology, cell biology, neuroscience, and microbiology. Inverted microscopes are often utilized in research to research and study tissues and cells, and especially living cells.

Metallurgical microscope

Metallurgical inverted microscopes are wont to examine large parts at high magnification for fractures or faults. They’re almost like biological inverted microscope within the magnification provided. But one primary difference is that the samples aren’t placed during a Petri dish, but rather a smooth side of the sample must be prepared so it can lay flat on the stage. This smooth sample is polished and is usually mentioned as a puck.

Metallurgical microscopes are high power microscopes designed to look at samples, that don’t allow light to undergo them. Reflected light shines down through the target lenses providing magnification of 50x, 100x, 200x, and sometimes 500x. Metallurgical microscopes are utilized to look at micron level cracks in metals, very thin layers of coatings like paint, and grain sizing.

Metallurgical microscopes are utilized within the aerospace industry, the car manufacturing industry, and by companies analyzing metallic structures, composites, glass, wood, ceramics, polymers, and liquid crystals.

Fluorescence microscope

A fluorescence microscope is an optical microscope that uses fluorescence rather than , or additionally to, scattering, reflection, and attenuation or absorption, to review the properties of organic or inorganic substances.

The basic task of the fluorescence microscope is to let excitation light radiate the specimen then mapped out the much weaker emitted light from the image. The radiation collides with the atoms in your specimen and electrons are excited to a better energy state. while they relax to a lower level, they emit light.

Digital microscopes

A digital microscope is a variation of a standard optical microscope that uses optics and a camera to output a picture to a monitor, sometimes by means of software running on a computer. A digital microscope often has its own in-built LED light, and differs from an optical microscope therein there’s no provision to watch the sample directly through an eyepiece. Since the image is concentrated on the digital circuit, the whole system is meant for the monitor image. The optics for the human eye are omitted.

Digital microscopes can range from cheap USB digital microscopes to advanced industrial digital microscopes costing tens of thousands of dollars. The low price commercial microscopes normally omit the optics for illumination (for example Köhler illumination and phase contrast illumination) and are more like webcams with a macro lens. For information about stereo microscopes with a camera in research and development, see optical microscope