Prescott's Microbiology 8th Edition by Joanne Willey, Linda Sherwood, Christopher J. Woolverton, Lansing Prescott, John Harley, Donald Klein

Exercise 3

How does resolution depend on the wavelength of light, refractive index, and numerical aperture? How are resolution and magnification related?

Step 1 of 3

Resolution is the shortest distance that two objects need to be separated in order to distinguish between the two. Imagine two specks of dust. If they are very far apart you can see that there are two specks. The closer you move these specks together, the more difficult it is to distinguish between the two specks. Eventually, you can move them so close that they appear to be one speck. The greater the resolving power of the microscope, the smaller would be the distance between two objects, which allows much fine details to be observed.