| How to estimate the size of objects in different Fields of View | |
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The field of view at 40 power is about 4 mm wide. The grey object is less than 1 mm in length. (It would take more than four of the grey objects to fit across the field of view.)
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| Without moving our specimen, we change the objective
lens to 100 power total magnification. We are looking at
the same object. (maybe a paramecium) The field of view at 100 power is about 1.6 mm wide. The gray object appears much larger. The actual size of the grey object is still the same-- less than 1 mm in length, but now we are able to estimate its size better - about 0.8 mm. (because it reaches about halfway across the 1.6mm field of view)
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| The field of view at 400 power is about 0.4 mm wide.
We are looking at the same object as above. The actual size of the grey object is still the same-- less than 1 mm in length, but now we would not be able to estimate its size better, because the entire object would be twice as wide as the field of view, and we wouldn't be able to see the whole object at one time.
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 400x |