THORLABS EDU-OMC1, User Manual

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Optical Microscopy Course Kit Chapter 3: Brief Description
Rev C, October 1, 2020 Page 3
Chapter 3 Brief Description
Introduction
This experimental setup is a teaching-oriented kit covering the content of a whole quarter- or semester-long optics
and microscopy course. It is structured in 10 units, each covering a different topic. Each unit is accompanied by
extensive teaching materials: The
Course Notes cover theory, the Lab Notes cover lab procedures, and the
Instructor Notes include tips for running the course. Additional video content is provided online on the product
website www.thorlabs.com/OMC. During the course, students build working light microscopes using
optomechanical parts, then use them to investigate imaging and contrast methods (including darkfield and phase
contrast, as well as fluorescence), theory (including aberrations, the Abbe theory of image formation, and
fluorescence filter use), and proper microscope set-ups (including Kohler illumination and camera use).
This User Guide provides a starting point for working with this kit. An overview of the documentation for this course
is provided in Section 3.2, followed by the component assembly in Chapter 5. This lab course and materials were
developed by Neil Switz and Daniel Fletcher at the University of California, Berkeley, and have been used in the
teaching curriculum there for many years. They have been substantially updated and revised as part of a multiyear
collaboration with Thorlabs in order to make the material more widely available; in the process, substantial new
hardware has been developed to improve and/or simplify offering of the material.
Figure 1 Overview of the optical microscopy setup. The kit contains an open rail with all optical
components to go through the teaching steps. Furthermore, the kit contains a research grade
spectrometer, various samples and tools to experiment, learn and evaluate.