Microscopy

AbstractMicroscopy involves the production and study of magnified images of objects too small to resolve with the unaided eye. There is no single microscope; rather, there are dozens of types, having in common only the ability to present an enlarged image. Microscopes vary in the mechanism by which enlarged images are formed, and in the information presented for each enlarged object. Some microscopes use visible light; others use infrared, ultraviolet, or x‐ray radiation; electrons are also used. There are a variety of scanning microscopes, some of which scan the object with an electron beam, a laser beam, or ultraviolet light. Most recently, an entire family of microscopes have been developed that scan a surface, maintaining a constant, tiny distance from that surface and thus plotting a surface map of objects as small as single atoms.Microscopes are also classified by the type of information they present: size, shape, transparency, crystallinity, color, anisotropy, refractive indices and dispersion, elemental analyses, and fluorescence, as well as infrared, visible, or infrared absorption frequencies, etc. One or more of these microscopes are used in every area of the physical sciences—biology, chemistry, and physics; and also in their subsciences: mineralogy, histology, cytology, pathology, metallography, etc.