Science Lab

The knowledge portal of Leica Microsystems offers scientific research and teaching material on the subjects of microscopy. The content is designed to support beginners, experienced practitioners and scientists alike in their everyday work and experiments. Explore interactive tutorials and application notes, discover the basics of microscopy as well as high-end technologies – become part of the Science Lab community and share your expertise!

Image of an onion flake taken with a basic Leica compound microscope after it was tested for resistance to fungus and mold growth following part 11 of the ISO 9022 standard.

ISO 9022 Standard Part 11 - Testing Microscopes with Severe Conditions

This article describes a test to determine the robustness of Leica microscopes to mold and fungus growth. The test follows the specifications of the ISO 9022 part 11 standard for optical instruments.

Immersion Objectives

How an immersion objective, which has a liquid medium between it and the specimen being observed, helps increase the numerical aperture and microscope resolution is explained in this article.

Intensity distribution (arbitrary color coding) of an image of two points where the distance between them corresponds to the Rayleigh criterion.

Microscope Resolution: Concepts, Factors and Calculation

This article explains in simple terms microscope resolution concepts, like the Airy disc, Abbe diffraction limit, Rayleigh criterion, and full width half max (FWHM). It also discusses the history.

How to Sanitize a Microscope

Due to the current coronavirus pandemic, there are a lot of questions regarding decontamination methods of microscopes for safe usage. This informative article summarizes general decontamination…

Digital Classroom Options

As teachers, you know your big challenge is to catch and keep the students’ attention and the best chance for this is by making the environment interactive. In the case of the Microscopy Classroom, we…

Factors for Selecting Student Microscopes

Selecting educational microscopes is not an easy task for teachers. The microscopes must stand up to daily use by not always careful hands, be constantly up and running, and fit the budget…

A 17th-century compound microscope (© Golub Collection – University of California, Berkeley/Steven Ruzin, Curator)

A Brief History of Light Microscopy

The history of microscopy begins in the Middle Ages. As far back as the 11th century, plano-convex lenses made of polished beryl were used in the Arab world as reading stones to magnify manuscripts.…

Optical Microscopes – Some Basics

The optical microscope has been a standard tool in life science as well as material science for more than one and a half centuries now. To use this tool economically and effectively, it helps a lot to…