Difference between light and electron microscope?

Answer 1

A light microscope uses a light source but a electron microscope has beams of electrons focused by magnetic lenses.

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The major difference in practice is resolution: the amount of detail that can be discerned in the image.

Under optimal conditions (excellent lenses, oil immersion) the resolution of a light microscope is about 0.2 micrometers (or 0.000,000,2 meters or 2 thousandths of a millimeter). Objects that are closer together cannot be detected as separate. The resolution of an transmission electron microscope is about 0.05 nanometers (or 0.000,000,000,05 meters or half of 1 millionth of a millimeter). This means that the electron microscope has about 10,000 times the resolving power of the light instrument, and can therefore show far greater detail, for example of subcellular structure.

Another difference of importance to biologists is that light microscopes (there are several kinds, such as bright field and phase contrast) enable the viewer to watch living cells. The electron microscope produces an image of the shadows cast by atoms of heavy metals used as stains; the living tissue is destroyed by the intense beam of electrons.

Answer 2

Electron microscopes shoot electrons at an object to illumiate it, whereas light microscopes illuminate the object using rays of light. This allows the electron microscope to magnify the object far greater than the light, because light has a much larger wavelength that electrons.

Answer 3

One uses light and the other uses electrons. It sounds like I'm being a smart aleck, but that's actually the truth. Also, electron microscopy uses magnetic fields for focusing instead of the lenses used in optical microscopes.

Answer 4

Light microscopes differ greatly from electron microscopes.

(I will be concentrating mainly on light microscopes.)

- Light microscopes use light to give us a magnified image. Light microscopes are limited/restricted to the wavelength of light, which is around 500nm. What does this mean? well, this means that if the light wave cannot pass between the 2 objects, it will only be seen as one big object under the microscope, and so the reseloution is not that great (around 200nm).

- Light microscopes need stains to be seen, because apparently, most cells have no colour, and important structures cannot be seen without a stain. Different stains will stain different structures.

- Light microscopes also need specimens to be sectioned. This means slicing tissue into very thin slices so we can actually see them under the light microscope.

- How do we find the total magnification when we are using a light microscope? Well, we need to start off with the eyepiece. This is the small hole that you look through in order to actually see the image. We need to know what the magnification of the eyepiece is in order to work out the total magnification. Eye pieces come in many diffrent shapes an sizes, but the generic ones are usually x10.0 or 15.0 or even 20.0 at the most. Okay, lets take x15.0 as an example of the total magnification. The next thing we need to do is we need to find out what the magnification of the objective lense is. now compound light microscopes usually come with a range of diffrent lenses which can be swivled around to the desired lense (its usually dependant on what you want to view) So, these come in x4.0, 10.0x 40.0x and even 100.0x. Lets take the 40.x as an example. Okay now we have 2 pieces of data about this microscope. The first is the magnification of the lense, which we said is 15.0, and the magnification of the objective lense, which we used as 40.0x. All we need to do to find out the total magnification is multiply the 2 numbers together. so 40.0*15= 600x so your Light microscope will magnify your chosen specimen 600x.

Hope this helped.

Answer 5

Golgi body is responsible for packaging protein for the cell

Answer 6

i dont really know any thing about Biology cause i dont have a favorite subject i think all the subjects are wack...........

Answer 7

Transmission is much better in all regards going to much smaller maginfications

Answer 8

Electron microscopes use electrons to reproduce images up to 50,000 times larger. Light microscopes use light and magnifying glasses to enlarge images up to 1,500 times larger.

Answer 9

Resolution and magnification. Electron microscopes use electron beams (shorter wavelengths) whereas light microscopes use visible light.