Tsunamis

The Microscope

Diagram of a typical student light microscope, showing the parts
Sight is one of our 5 senses, and we can see the world and its complexity at a bare eye profile, but when we talk about being able to see how complex the complexity of the world is, our eye is unable to see beyond and to reach the tiniest pieces and details, because they are very little. Being able to solve thisproblem, and instrument was developed around the 1600’s, which was able to reach the smallest details whereas human eye couldn’t accomplish. Before the 1600’s people seemed to die with no apparent cause, and sickness spread around the world without any reasonable explanation, and doctors couldn’t find a reason or cause for this happening, and there were neither cures nor explanation to thisoccurrences. Medicine and science had very basic ideas and theories, which wouldn’t take them to a reasonable conclusion about what things, were made of. Doctors were unable to find a reason why people died or why they got sick, there was no way of knowing if there had been a bacteria, an infection in a system, etc, nor the less, they wouldn’t even know if bacteria was bacteria, or how it looked like.Sickness had no apparent reason, no logical or scientific explanation, illnesses couldn’t be cured because there was no way of knowing the root of the disease, leading to death in most cases, because to the naked eye, everything inside seemed right. Before the 1600’s no one knew why illness spread, neither how to conserve food or what was our body made of.
Around 1590 two Dutchmen, father and son,Zaccharias and Hans Jansen started experimenting with lenses; they put a series of lenses in a tube and saw that the image seen in the end of the tube was enlarged, much more than what a magnifying glass would have. Anton Van Leeuwenhoek was interested in lenses when working with magnifying glasses; he learnt how to build lenses. Anton was known as “The father of microscopy”. He managed to seebacteria, yeast, blood cells and many tiny animals in the tiniest thing, such as a drop of water, and making history , he was once and for all able to see complexity in all its ways. He was able to see how unsanitary was the conditions living in those times , and how these unsanitary living lead to illness and sometimes death , this was an enormous step for science , medicine and human kind; “Inthe year of 1657 I discovered very small living creatures in rain water.” Like this medicine and science could make an improvement and answers for diseases could be found, finally.
Later on Robert Hooke improved it with a further investigation, improving the design and capacities, but little was done until the 19th century when microscopes were totally improved to the ones we use now a days.Microscopes work by gathering light from a small area of a thin, well-illuminated specimen that is near-by. The objective lens of a microscope is small and spherical, so it has a much shorter focal length on each side. The image is then magnified by a second lens which is called the eyepiece. The eyepiece in microscopes if fixed while the objective lens can move and you can change them. The compoundof microscopes uses both lenses to increase the image size that is going to be focused in the viewer’s retina.
Light rays go from the object, they bend as they pass through the first lens, and then the rays meet at a focal point. After, the rays spread out creating the first image. Then the light rays that make up this enlarged image will spread out further before they bend inwards by theeyepiece. The rays passing through the eyepiece enter the eye at an angle, so they seem to be coming from a larger object.
A. light ray
B. Object
C. First lens
D. focal point
E. First image
F. Eyepiece
G. image perceived by retina.
Although the microscope made a huge advance in today’s society, it also has limitations; the magnification given by the lenses reached it maximum point. So today it...