A magnifying power of a converging lens used as a simple microscope is . A compound microscope is a combination of two such converging lenses. Why don’t we have magnifying power ? In other words, why can the objective not be treated as a simple microscope but the eyepiece can?

Question

Philoid · Accepted Answer

A simple microscope has converging lens which is used to magnify the image of the object.

Now, in case of compound microscope, this magnifying part is taken care by ‘eye peice’.

In compound microscopes we have another lens called ‘objective lens’. The purpose of this lens is to enlarge image of the object at distance less than the focal length of the eye peice.

Hence, the magnification power of a compound microscope is not expressed in a way similar to a

simple microscope.