When it comes to a microscope, you are probably most familiar with these terms: body/head, base, and arm. These are what make the compound microscope, but there is so much more to a compound microscope than just those three main structural components.

Compound microscopes have an eyepiece, which you look through, that allows power of 10X to 15X.

The eyepiece tube is obviously what actually holds the eyepiece in place.

There are also objective lenses, which is the primary compound microscope optical lens. On most microscopes, there are three to five lenses and show from 4x-100x power.

The nosepiece holds the objective lenses. They are mounted onto a rotating turret so that different objectives can be easily selected. Standard compound microscopes will come with 100x, 40x, 10x, and 4x objective power lenses; however, other measurements can be purchased separately.

The stage is known as the place on the compound microscope that holds the specimen that is being viewed.

The stage can be mechanical so that I can be moved up and down for different views.

When there isn’t a mechanical stage, there are stage clips. These stage clips hold the slide firmly in place.

To explain more of the three main structural components of the compound microscope:

The body or also known as the head of a compound microscope actually house the optical parts.

The arm is used for the user to hold or grasp while utilizing the microscope.

The base is found at the bottom of the microscope and is primarily used to support the entire microscope.