In: Biology
what is the specialty of a compound microscope? what do you mean by parfocal ?
Answer: Compound Microscope is a high power optical instrument which is used for observing the highly magnified images of small objects, consisting of an objective lens with a very short focal length and an eyepiece with a longer focal length. Compound Microscopes are the biological microscopes used to view objects not visible to the naked eye. The objective lens has three different magnifing lenses that range from 4x-100x and with a 10X ocular lens (eyepiece), the compound Microscope's total magnification will ranges from 40x-1000x depending which objective lens is in use. It provides an enlarged inverted virtual image of the specimen.
In microscopy, parfocal means that if one objective is in focus under low-power and then switched to a high-power objective, the object stays in focus and the focus will not be lost.
A microscope that is “parfocal” is one which, if it is in focus with one objective, when the objective is rotated, will remain in focus.