Optical parts of a Compound Microscope

1. Mirror: It is a plano-concave mirror, with one side plane and other concave. It is attached to the lower end of the arm. It is used for reflecting light rays into the microscope. The plane mirror is used to reflect the rays of light coming from nearby sources such as a bulb or a tube light while the concave mirror is used to reflect the rays of light from distant source i.e., the diffused sunlight.

2. Objective lenses: They are attached to the nose piece. Generally the lenses with the magnificating power of 5x, 10x, 40x and 100x are available. These lenses magnify the image of the object by the number written on the lens.

3. Eye piece lens: It is also called ocular lens and attached to the top of the body tube. It normally ranges in magnification from 5x, 10x and 15x. It is used to magnify the image produced by the objective.
Magnification of Object