Reviewing the Different Types of Microscopes - Video Tutorials & Practice Problems

Reviewing the Different Types of Microscopes

in this video, we're going to review the different types of microscopes that we've already covered in our previous lesson videos. And so notice that down below we have two tables. We have a table here on all of the light microscopes that we talked about. And then towards the bottom we have a second table on all of the electron microscopes that we talked about in our previous lesson videos. And so we'll start off filling out the blanks here in the first table on the light microscopes and then we'll move on to the second table on the electron microscopes. And so notice that we have the type of microscope over here on the left hand column and all of these are light microscopes, which means that they will be using visible light to help magnify the specimen. And so in terms of the type of microscope for the first one that we have here is the bright field microscope, which is the most common light microscope. And it is used to observe stained or unstained specimens on a bright background. And so this is going to be the most common type of bright field microscope is the compound light microscope. And so make sure to go back to our older lesson videos to review the components and how to calculate the total magnification using a compound microscope. Now one of the disadvantages of a bright field microscope is that sometimes transparent unstained cells can be, can create really poor contrast that makes it very difficult to visualize those cells. And so it's important to have other microscopes that are capable of increasing the contrast. And so the first microscope that we talked about that increases contrast is called the dark field microscope and the dark field microscope is practically the opposite of the bright field microscope. Instead of creating a bright background, the dark field microscope creates a dark background and the specimens themselves are going to appear brighter. And so here we have an example image of what that might look like. Then what we have is the phase contrast microscope. And the phase contrast microscope is going to allow for cells and their dense structures to appear darker than the grayish background that they tend to create. Uh Then last but not least here what we have is the differential interference contrast microscope or the D. I. C. Microscope, which is going to be critical for creating three dimensional images. It's very detailed and highly contrasting and creates three D. Images of live specimens. So then we had talked about some light microscopes that are capable of detecting fluorescents or emitted light. And we talked about specifically the con focal scanning laser microscope or the C. S. L. M. And uh it's capable of creating high contrast, also capable of creating three dimensional images and it shows several planes of focus within the specimen. Next, what we have is the two photon microscope and the two photon microscope is also going to help create high contrast. It's capable of creating three dimensional images but specifically of really really deep structures. And it's also good for creating time lapse images as well. And so we have the little sunglasses here to remind you that it's capable of somewhat of X ray vision to visualize deep structures and the little clock here to remind you of its capability of producing time lapse images. And then last but not least here, what we have is the super resolution microscope which is somewhat like an HD Tv to bring really high resolution for the light microscope. So it's a light microscope with extremely high resolution of about 0.1 micro meters. And then uh next what we have are the electron microscopes which are different than all of the other microscopes that we just talked about because all of those are light microscopes that use light electron microscopes do not use visible light to magnify. Instead they use electrons to magnify. And so we talked about two different types of electron microscopes. First, we talked about the transmission electron microscope, which is commonly abbreviated as the T E. M. And this is going to be important for creating two dimensional images from a beam of electrons passing through the specimen. And it's mainly used for visualizing internal cell structures. Then what we talked about was the scanning electron microscope or the S. E. M. And the scanning electron microscope creates three D images instead of two D images from a beam of electron scattering off of the specimen surface. And so it's mainly going to be used to visualize external cell structures on the surface of the specimen. Uh And so this here concludes our review of the different types of microscopes that we covered in our previous videos. And so I'll see you all in our next video.