[Music] in this video we're going to look at the differences between light microscopes and electron microscopes if you can imagine a microscope in your head you're probably thinking of a light microscope because these are the ones that you can use in the classroom and what we think of as conventional microscopes the advantage of light microscopes is that they're small easy to use and relatively cheap however because they rely on light which has a wavelength of 0. 2 micrometers their resolution is limited to 0. 2 micrometers as well which basically means that any details less than 0.
2 micrometers apart will appear blurry so while we can use light microscopes to see individual cells like these onion cells they're not good enough to study the subsolar structures found within cells like mitochondria now electron microscopes on the other hand are really big very expensive and hard to use so are only really used by scientists in laboratories their benefit though is that they use electrons instead of light and electrons have a wavelength of just 0. 1 nanometers and so their maximum resolution is also 0. 1 nanometers and remember with resolution a smaller value is better because it means that you can see tinier details so if we compare the 0.
2 micrometers of light microscopes to the 0.
