MicroscopesBlog: Expert's reviews, news, notes on Microscopes, Centrifuges, Lab Coats, Pipettes, Lab Safety, & more Lab Products!

A microscope is a device which allows one to view something which is too small to be seen by the naked eye. Items which are often studied under a microscope can include a single hair, blood or skin cells, or small mettalurgical objects. With the naked eye these are hard to see, and impossible to view in any detail. However, by using a microscope the intricacies of these and any other object are much more clearly revealed. This kind of detail is often required in science and so those who use microscopes most in their work are often scientists of some shape or form. Knowing what a microscope is used for is only half of the story, though. It is also interesting to consider how the technology works. The technical alignments of the components of a microscope are very detailed and can be incredibly hard to get right. However the basic principles of the function of a microscope are actually surprisingly simple. A magnifying lens is situated in the part of the microscope which is placed near the object being studied. This lens creates an enlarged image of the subject just inside the tube from the light which it reflects. This is quite a complex area of physics but the image of the object which is created inside the microscope is what is actually enlarged to enable a more in depth view of the subject. Most microscopes actually contain two lenses, one at each end of the eye tube. Between them is an air separated couplet. This is known as a compound lens microscope. The image of the subject is created between the two lenses. The one closest to the subject is used to bring the image into focus while the one closest to the eye is used to help the eye focus on that image. When viewing an object through a microscope correctly your eye should be focused to infinity. For those who use a microscope frequently, or for prolonged periods of time, and experience headaches or tired eyes it is usually as a result of incorrect focusing of the microscope. If it is focused correctly there should be no adverse affects to using a microscope often and for long periods at a time.

We are currently adding over 12,000!!! new laboratory and scientific products to our website. I've been promised that they will be up by September 1, so keep your fingers crossed. Today I wanted to present the wide selection of laboratory consumables that microscopes.com will be carrying. Many of you also stated that you don't need laboratory equipment or laboratory furniture so much as you are in constant need of things like beakers, flasks, test tubes, bottles, jars, vials, caps, septa, funnels, and other types of laboratory glassware and laboratory plasticware. We have delivered with over one half of our product line in lab consumables. More specifically, we will carry things like erlenmeyer flasks, media and wash bottles, scintillation vials, petri dishes, etc. Be on the lookout for a brand-new looking website to present all these products to you. Please help us grow by purchasing something soon. We will offer free shipping on all orders over $50.00. We are more than happy to accept any suggestions for this new scientific distributor.

While I have been busy telling everyone in my last several blogs about spectrophotometers, centrifuges, and refrigerators, someone was sharp enough to point out to me that I totally forgot about the microscope accessories. This site is called microscopes.com after all. The initial reason we decided to expand was to allow our customers a more comprehensive microscope shopping experience. Well, without further a do, I present to you some of the microscope accesories that we intend to carry. The number one item that goes with microscopes are of course, microscope slides! You would be hard-pressed to use one without them. (mettalurgical microscopes notwithstanding) We will carry them from VWR and Erie Scientific, which will provide a very large variety of slides. We will have plain and frosted slides, etched microscope slides, culture slides, fluorescent slides, and many more. Don't worry, we haven't forgotten the slide glasses (or cover slips as some of you call them) We'll have round cover glasses, square cover glasses, and micro cover glasses. We also heard and are delivering what so many of you also asked for...slide storage... more on this to come later.

One of the reasons I like stereo microscopes is that you can use this type of microscope to observe just about anything at hand. Out of habit, I collect rocks, old wasp and insect nests, even dead insects, themselves, dried flower and seed heads, twigs, rotten pieces of bark, chunks of moss and fungi and many other mementos from my travels on the bike trail. Closer to home, you can also use this kind of microscope for looking at coins, stamps, electrical components, tiny details on model trains and other toys. In other words, if it fits under a stereo microscope, go for it. My stereo microscope of choice is the LOMO SF-100, to which I have added an aftermarket ring light. Originally I added the ring light for photography - a ring light reduces glare on the specimen - but I was also pleased to learn that a ring light also reveals more detail in the specimen than a standard reflected light.

We're currently overwhelmed here at Microscopes.com. We're busily adding about 20,000!!! new laboratory and scientific products to our website. A message to our old-timers: microscopes.com will go through a metamorphosis of sorts. We will go from all microscopes all the time to a full fledged laboratory and medical distributor. Today, I want to cover some new constant cold temperature products that we will be adding: Refrigerators and Freezers. Some of the new products will include laboratory refrigerators, wine refrigerators, and compact refrigerators. In the freezer category, we will have upright freezers, chest freezers, small freezers, ice cream freezers, combination fridge freezers, and ultralow freezers. The ultralows will go down to -86C. We will carry all your favorite brands, including Thermo Electron, Revco, Sanyo, and VWR. In addition to all the cold temperature storage, we will have freezers racks, freezer boxes, and many, many, more things. We can use all the help we can get, so if anyone is looking for a job with us, contact us now! Otherwise, you'll hear more from me next week.

"I need a magnifier that has both a lot of magnification and a large lens size? Where can I get one?" This is a request I get now and then and it's a tough one to fill. When I'm in a technical mood, I explain that it's the very nature of magnifiers, themselves. There's only so much you can do with a single lens system. As magnification goes up, lens size in a magnifier goes down. If you want a handheld magnifier with a lot of magnification, it's going to inevitably be a small one. Is there an alternative? Yes. There is a magnifier that offers both a wide field of view and a lot of magnification. It's called a stereo microscope. A stereo microscope and a hand magnifier have a lot in common. Both produce upright, correct right to left, three-dimensional images. The difference, of course, is that a stereo microscope won't fit in your pocket, but that doesn't mean you have to sacrifice portability, completely. The little Nikon Mini Field microscope is a stereo microscope that weighs in at an amazing 14 ounces. That's the weight of a compact binocular. Throw one in your fanny pack and head out to your nearest park or preserve and have some fun.

Artist Willard Wigan Sculpts Microart That Requires a Microscope to View. The Birmingham, England, native is known as the creator of the world's smallest sculptures. He makes small worlds of their own that are almost invisible to the naked eye -- such as a $300,000 sculpture that sits on a pinhead. Under a microscope, you see an elephant carved from a fragment of a single grain of sand. "The tail is made from a floating particle of dust out of the air," Wigan explained. How does he do it? Wigan uses tiny, homemade tools to carve his sculptures out of grains of rice or sugar, and paints them with a hair plucked from a housefly's back. He said he's able to slow his heart down to work between the beats to avoid hand tremors. "Underneath microscopes, those tremors become an earthquake," he said. Working with the tiny art is precarious; he described working on a second Alice in Wonderland, because he lost the first one. "I was carrying her toward the needle, and then I looked again through the microscope and she'd gone. I think I inhaled her." With the patience to build a doll the size of a human blood cell, Wigan said the ultimate satisfaction is in the reaction of admirers. "The job satisfaction is people admiring it and being surprised and being shocked and being amazed. You know, people's mouths drop open in disbelief."

Today I want to talk about a big new category on microscopes.com, that is Balances and Scales. Whether you need to weigh a microgram of 1,2-dimethyl chickenwire (inside joke) or some bananas to make banana bread (my favorite), we will have the most accurate balances for you. These can be used in laboratory situations, in deli departments, as jeweler's scales, or any physics, chemistry, or biology laboratory. We are currently adding literally thousands of new products for scientific and research needs. In addition to all the new balances we will carry from Mettler Toledo, Ohaus, Sartorius, LabConco, and others, please also contact us for any weigh boats or weight pans, and hundreds of different scale and balance calibration sets. Microscopes.com - we ARE your laboratory distributor.

When we originally set out to expand the offering on microscopes.com, the intent was to add slightly to our microscope product offering and include such microscope accessories as microscope illuminators and microscope slides. Who would have thought that we would be creating an entire laboratory store online. We look forward to helping all our customers obtain top notch laboratory equipment and laboratory consumables at a competitive price. We will be offering free shipping on all orders over $50.00. Whether you are a Ph.D. Microbiologist at Phizer, a laboratory technician at a small law enforcement agency or a scientific hobbyist, our store will have something for everyone. Today, I want to speak about an instrument that is found in many laboratories at all levels - the centrifuge! Some of the brands of centrifuges we will be carrying include Beckman Coulter, Thermo Electron, UNICO, LabNet, Eppendorf, Heraeus, and Clay Adams. In addittion to the actual centrifuges, we will also carry such items as centrifuge tubes, centrifuge rotors, centrifuge adapters, centrifuge bottles, evaporators, and free dryers. It is only a matter of time before our store is complete. Be sure to stop on by and have a look. Products will start being added sometime this month.