• Question: can microscope be used for anything?

    Asked by sord532fess64 to Polly, Lorelei R, Katy B, John B, James L, hannahbaird, Eva S, elaineho, dimonavidenlieva, angharad on 7 Apr 2026.
    • Photo: James Lazenby

      James Lazenby answered on 7 Apr 2026:

      A great question, and like many things it depends. There are many different types of microscopes and different techniques you can use with those microscopes. Each have pros and cons, and most of what I do in a day is helping people choose the right tool and the right technique that will give them the information they need to address their scientific question.

      For example, when you think of a microscope you’re probably thinking of a light microscope using transmission light. This works by shining a bright light through your sample and then a collection of lenses magnifies the sample so you can visualise it. The benefits are that its a cheap microscope, the sample preparation work is very easy, and you can visualise live things. The downside is that your sample has to be transparent, the resolution is low (the ability to identify between two separate particles in your sample as they get close to each other) and you are limited to about 1000x magnification. If you wanted to see smaller than that you may want another type of microscopy like Electron Microscopy. Electron Microscopy uses electrons (instead of photons of light) to visualise your sample but your samples have to be carefully prepared, they can’t be alive and it’s a lot more expensive to buy and run the equipment.

    • Photo: John Bergqvist

      John Bergqvist answered on 7 Apr 2026:

      Thank you for your question. I think James answered it perfectly, so I will just fill in with some personal experience.

      I use a Light Microscope every day for my work on worms. The worms are about 1 mm in length when they have grown up, so the light microscope is perfect for working with worms due to the low magnification. I use it primarily to look at them and to pick them from one plate to another. I can also record my worms by attaching a camera to the microscope so that I can analyse how they behave.

      My other experience with microscopes is with Fluorescence Microscopes which are designed to shine a particular wavelength of light onto my sample which triggers a protein to light up. I used this when I was studying how a bacterium infected a cell (much smaller than worms!). The cell was lighting up with one wavelength and the bacterium with another wavelength so that we could distinguish the two.

      Both of these types of microscopes are designed to give you information about things you can see. There are lots of other experiments that require other tools because you cannot see them. One example is PCR (polymerase chain reaction) which is used to get a specific DNA sequence, either to check if it there (like when the hospitals were checking if people had the covid virus) or to analyse the actual DNA sequence (like when the covid virus was mutating – different DNA sequence from the one before).

      Hope this helps!

Comments