Microscopy

Microscopy makes it possible to examine (σκοπειν) objects or their details that are too small (µικροσ) to be seen with the naked eye, by providing enlarged images of them, i.e. to see them from apparent larger angles, to magnify them. Microscopes bring within human reach the infinitely small that escape ordinary vision.

Recently, these instruments have been divided into two main classes, depending on whether they use electromagnetic radiation beams to form images - to which we associate the notion of photon, which practically extends in this spectrum from the near infrared to X-rays - or corpuscular radiation beams: electrons or heavier particles such as protons or certain ions, to which modern physics knows how to associate a wave, even if it is not electromagnetic. In addition to certain instruments using the properties of acoustic waves, there are now new families of instruments operating according to more recently studied physical principles, involving the existence of electron clouds in the vicinity of conducting surfaces (tunnel effect), fields of attractive forces between nearby bodies (atomic force) or the properties of so-called evanescent light waves.