Oil Immersion Microscopy Animation

This short animation illustrates how oil immersion works.

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We need to use oil to see at the highest magnification. Without getting too technical there's an air gap between the top of the coverslip and the front lens. This gap actually causes light to bend or refract. These scattered rays of light don't travel through the objective lens and are lost to the image. Oil affects the light a lot like glass does, so we replace the air gap with oil and suddenly we're able to see higher resolution images.

[demonfedor]

Basic oil immersion explained quite well. I'm wondering if you have a video on advanced oil immersion. If not, advanced oil immersion happens when you not only use oil on the objective but also on a condensor, provided it's designed for it. It gives much higher resolution since there is no longer an air gap between the condensor and the specimen glass. However the objective's numerical aperture needs to be higher than 1 to take advantage of this technique. Also a dry condensor will always have it's numerical aperture below 1. Water immersion of a condensor is also possible, but it will give lower resolution. Best objectives I've seen had apertures as high as 1.45. I personally own an oil immersion APO 90x1.3 objective. Xylene is usually a solvent of choice to clean the oil away from objective lens, specimen glass and condensor.

[terrylee]

i wish life could be explained this easily.

[Tracks]

When is your next video? :D Keep it up!

[marcinmorun]

How high must be the magnification level should be before oil is required?

[thebestplayerdead]

So, do I still need to add a cover? Or no cover

[adamdelarozza]

I would think its safe to say that the pressure in the oil is less than atmospheric pressure therefore its under a vacuum. Light refraction in a vacuum is the advantage and a poor man's SEM😄