If you think viewing something at one hundred degrees of magnification is special, you ain't seen nothin' yet. There are, and have been for a while, electron microscopes which can provide two million degrees of magnification, even though there are very few human beings who will ever have any reason to magnify anything to that extent.
Perhaps the most surprising thing about an electron microscope is the simplicity with which it is able to achieve such great magnification. The "ordinary" microscope which is a staple of thousands of high school biology labs magnifies with the use of light waves; an electron microscope, as its name implies, uses electrons--those subatomic particles which exist at levels beyond our capacity to experience directly.
The reason most of us will never get near an electron microscope is that most of us will never need to see anything magnified to the two millionth degree. But there are research facilities around the world which use electron microscopes as a normal part of doing business. Their research involves molecules or cells which need to be investigated at extremely close range. They are often involved in studying cells damaged by disease as a means to finding cures.
History Of The Electron Microscope
The first primitive electron microscope, which could magnify objects up to four hundred times, was built in Germany in 1931. Its developers, Ernst Ruska and Max Kroll, received funding from Siemens in 1937, and by 1939 Siemens had the first commercial electron microscope. Although the electron microscope of today operates on the same basic principles as the first Siemens model, they are far more advanced in their capabilities.
How The Electron Microscope Works
Powered by an electron source, the electron microscope projects those electrons in a lens-directed beam on to the specimen being examined; the beam irradiates the specimen; and the light reflected back to the electron microscope user's eye. The strength of the beam and angle of the reflected light make the extreme magnifications of the electron microscope possible.
Such high magnification allows researchers to get a clear view of their specimen's texture and a more accurate understanding of its surface materials, leading to a more precise determination of their type. The electron microscope has even naked possible the study of matter at its subatomic levels, so that we can finally understand the basic building blocks of the world around us.
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