2.1: Introduction

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Rosanna Hartline
West Hills College Lemoore

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Introduction

Many important anatomical features, especially those that function at the tissue or cellular levels, are too small to be seen by the unaided eye. Cells vary in size. With few exceptions, individual cells cannot be seen with the naked eye, so scientists use microscopes (micro- = “small”; -scope = “to look at”) to study them. A microscope is an instrument that magnifies an object. Microscopes are valuable tools for magnifying small sections (cuts/slices - see Planes/Sections in Chapter 1 ) of biological material so that otherwise inaccessible details can be resolved (distinguished). Most photographs of cells are taken with a microscope, and these images can also be called micrographs.

The optics of a microscope’s lenses change the orientation (direction) of the image that the user sees. A specimen that is right-side up and facing right on the microscope slide will appear upside-down and facing left when viewed through a microscope, and vice versa. Similarly, if the slide is moved left while looking through the microscope, it will appear to move right, and if moved down, it will seem to move up. This occurs because microscopes use two sets of lenses to magnify the image. Because of the manner by which light travels through the lenses, this system of two lenses produces an inverted image.

Attributions

"BIOL 250 Human Anatomy Lab Manual SU 19" by Yancy Aquino, Skyline College is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
"Biology 2e" by Mary Ann Clark, Matthew Douglas, Jung Choi, OpenStax is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.