• Question: What is your preferred microscope type?

    Asked by anon-177603 to Andrew, Becky, Daniel, Helen, Nicola, Urslaan on 19 Jun 2018.
    • Photo: Urslaan Chohan

      Urslaan Chohan answered on 19 Jun 2018:

      For me, it’s got to be the scanning electron microscope (SEM). You can see lots through an SEM, and you do your initial studies through it! The transition electron microscope (TEM) is a lot more difficult to use! The way they work is they fire particles known as electrons at a sample (why it’s called electron microscope), and the electrons bounce back after getting a certain depth into the sample material. We then look at the energy of those electrons as they hit a screen, which gives us images of the sample! They’re really small, so we get to see reaaaally small details!

    • Photo: Helen Littler

      Helen Littler answered on 19 Jun 2018:

      I don’t use a microscope as the stuff I do is big. Any analysis is done by sending samples for testing which is good as I am long sighted so I find using a microscope hard!

    • Photo: Becky Thomas

      Becky Thomas answered on 20 Jun 2018:

      I only work with big stuff too, so I don’t use a microscope much. They are a great tool though (just not good for looking at birds and mammals – I use binoculars for that!!).

    • Photo: Daniel Marsh

      Daniel Marsh answered on 20 Jun 2018:

      I don’t really have to use a microcope in my job – my mobile labs are measuring gas and particles and we use chemical scanning techniques to measure things that you wouln’t be able o see with your eyes!

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