in this video I'm going to demonstrate the parts and operation of a compound light microscope so this is the arm and the base whenever you pick up the microscope make sure you hold the arm and support the base at the top we have the oculars and they can be adjusted out and in to fit the width of your eye the oculars have a magnification of 10x down here is the revolving nosepiece each of the lenses you see on the revolving nosepiece has a different magnification this microscope is outfitted with three objectives a 10x a 40 X and a 100x below the nosepiece is the stage on this stage there is a clamp for holding the slide below the stage on one side there are the stage moving controls one control moves the stage back and forth the lower control moves the stage right and left these dials move the stage up and down to help focus your specimen the coarse adjustment moves the stage quickly the fine adjustment moves the stage in much smaller increments in the center of the stage there's a hole and underneath this hole is the condenser so if we look underneath the stage you see the condenser is up here the condenser can be controlled and moved up and down but for most applications all the way to the top is the best position on the condenser there's also a small lever this is the iris diaphragm lever and it controls the amount of light that passes through the condenser directly below the condenser is the light source on the front of your microscope there is a switch which will turn on the light source and on the side of the microscope there is a dial turning this dial up increases the brightness of the light source when you use your microscope it's best to start with a light relatively low and you want to start with the lowest power objective in place when you're finished using the microscope make sure that you clean it to clean it you will use lens paper remove a sheet of lens paper and you can wipe off the oculars and you can also wipe off the objectives if yous used oil on your microscope you want to use the lens cleaner to clean off any oil just put a couple drops on your paper and rub to remove any oil if necessary you can also watch the condenser to put the microscope away begin by turning the light all the way down and then turn off the power then rotate the nosepiece so that the no power or low power objective is above the stage and lower the stage completely finally wrap the power cord around the base of the microscope around the arm if your microscope has a dust cover put that on it now