Cells vary in size. With few exceptions, individual cells are too small to be seen with the naked eye, so scientists use microscopes to study them. A microscope is an instrument that magnifies an obje...Cells vary in size. With few exceptions, individual cells are too small to be seen with the naked eye, so scientists use microscopes to study them. A microscope is an instrument that magnifies an object and various types of microscopes are used to visualize cells and their internal structures.
To give you a sense of the size of a cell, a typical human red blood cell is about eight millionths of a meter or eight micrometers (abbreviated as μm) in diameter; the head of a pin is about two thou...To give you a sense of the size of a cell, a typical human red blood cell is about eight millionths of a meter or eight micrometers (abbreviated as μm) in diameter; the head of a pin is about two thousandths of a meter (millimeters, or mm) in diameter. Resolving power is the ability of a microscope to allow the eye to distinguish two adjacent structures as separate; the higher the resolution, the closer those two objects can be, and the better the clarity and detail of the image.
