• Question: How powerful are the microscopes that you use?

    Asked by to Bethany, Hannah, Keith, Peter, Ramya on 18 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Peter Elliott

      Peter Elliott answered on 18 Jun 2014:

      The most powerful microscope I have used is a FEI Tecnai 12 Biotwin Transmission Electron Microscope. This has a maximum magnification of 300,000 times normal vision, although I was only using it at around 10,000. This means I can look at bacteria that are less than 3 um (0.0003 cms) in incredible detail. I have uploaded such an image onto my home page for you to look at.
      The instrument is powerful enough that you can actually look at large protein complexes which is very cool.

    • Photo: Hannah Tanner

      Hannah Tanner answered on 18 Jun 2014:

      The light microscopes used everyday in a hospital microbiology laboratory magnify things 1000x. This means we can see most bacteria, fungi and parasites but it’s not powerful enough to see viruses or details of what’s inside the organisms.

    • Photo: Bethany Dearlove

      Bethany Dearlove answered on 20 Jun 2014:

      I don’t use a microscope for my work – I identify the microbes using the patterns of A, C, G and T in their genes instead!

Comments