• Question: how much do you have to zoom in on your microscope to see the fossils

    Asked by shadow to Duncan on 16 Mar 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Duncan Murdock

      Duncan Murdock answered on 16 Mar 2010:

      That’s a great question. It depends what I want to see. To just see them and work out what kind of fossil they are I zoom in around 30 to 50 times, then if I want to see more details I can zoom in up to 100 times. If that’s not enough we have an even more powerful microscope called a scanning electron microscope. This uses a beam of electrons instead of light, because they can get much smaller, and I can use it to see really small details and zoom in up to 2000 times! So it’s really about using the right tool for the job.

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