🚀 Inventions and machines 🔧 Machines and tools

A microscope

📖 In short

A microscope is an instrument that magnifies very tiny things our eyes can't see, so we can see cells, germs and the details of a fly's wing. It's one of the most important tools for scientists and doctors.

🤩 Did you know?

A hand magnifying glass can make things 10 to 20 times bigger.
German scientists made the first electron microscope in 1931.
With the microscope scientists discovered that all living things are made of cells.
Doctors use microscopes to find out which germ is causing an illness.

🔎 Find out more

🌟 Magnifying lenses

A light microscope has glass lenses stacked above each other, and light passes through the tiny object and the lenses, magnifying its image hundreds of times.

🔍 A hidden world

When the first scientists looked at a drop of pond water through a microscope, they were amazed to see tiny living things swimming in it that no one had ever seen!

💡 The electron microscope

An electron microscope uses beams of electrons instead of light, magnifying things millions of times so we can even see tiny viruses.

🎯 How do we use it?

We put the tiny object on a glass slide, place it under the microscope lens, then look through the top lens and slowly turn the knob until the picture is clear.