Question: what is the strongest magnification we are able to get with modern microscopes?

Ashley Cadby answered on 28 Jun 2012:

A bizzilon,
Magnification does not mean that much when you use really powerful microscopes. If you think about it when you zoom in on an image on a computer you can carry on doing that forever, except you just see one pixel, thats the same with microscopes. What we use is a term called resolution, this tells us how close two objects can be before we can not tell if there is one or two objects. If you have a group of friends across a field you might be able to see them but you can tell how many people are there. If they spread out so there are gaps between them then you can count them. As they come close together at some point they will look like a group rather than individuals, at that point you have reached the limit of your resolution. A normal micrsope has a resolution of about 300nm, so two objects look like one if they are close than 300nm together. Our best optical micrscope, which uses some very cool science cheats (they are a little complicated but if you want to know how they work ask me in another question) we can see object as seperate if they are only 20nm apart. Our atomic force microscope can see indiviual atoms by feeling them and atoms are about 0.2nm apart.