Previously, however, to using the micrometer, the value of its divisions should be ascertained with each object-glass; the method of doing this is as follows:—
Place a slip of ruled glass on the stage; and having turned the eye-piece so that the lines on the two glasses are parallel, read off the number of divisions in the eye-piece which cover one on the stage. Repeat this process with different portions of the stage-micrometer, and if there be a difference, take the mean. Suppose the hundredth of an inch on the stage requires eighteen divisions in the eye-piece to cover it; it is plain that an inch would require eighteen hundred, and an object which occupied nine of these divisions would measure the two-hundredth of an inch. Take the instance supposed, and let the microscope be furnished with a draw-tube, marked on the side with inches and tenths. By drawing this out a short distance, the image of the stage micrometer will be expanded until one division is covered by twenty in the eye-piece. These will then have the value of two-thousandths of an inch, and the object which before measured nine will then measure ten; which, divided by 2,000, gives the decimal fraction ·005.
Enter in a table the length to which the tube is drawn out, and the number of divisions on the eye-piece micrometer equivalent to an inch on the stage; and any measurements afterwards taken with the same micrometer and object-glass may, by a short process of mental arithmetic, be reduced to the decimal parts of an inch, if not actually observed in them.
In ascertaining the value of the micrometer with a deep objective, if the hundredth of an inch on the stage occupies too much of the field, then the two-hundredth or five-hundredth should be used and the number of the divisions corresponding to that quantity be multiplied by two hundred or five hundred, as the case may be.
The micrometer should not be fitted into too deep an eye-piece, as it is essential to preserve good definition. A middle-power Kellner or Huyghenian is frequently employed; at all events, use the eye-piece of lower power rather than impair the image.
The eye-lens above the micrometer should not be of shorter focus than three-quarters of an inch, even with high-power objectives.
The Ramsden Eye-piece.—The cobweb micrometer is the most efficient piece of apparatus yet brought into use for measuring the magnified image. It is made by stretching across the field of the eye-piece two extremely fine parallel wires or cobwebs, one or both of which can be separated by the action of a micrometer screw, the trap head of which is divided into a hundred or more equal parts, which successively pass by an index as the milled head is turned, shown in [Fig. 104]. A portion of the field of view is cut off at right angles to the filaments by a scale formed of a thin plate of brass having notches at its edges, the distances between which correspond to the threads of the screw, every fifth notch (as in the previous case) being made deeper than the rest, to make the work of enumeration easier. The number of entire divisions on the scale shows then how many complete turns of the screw have been made in the separation of the wires, while the number of index points on the milled head shows the value to the fraction of a turn, that may have been made in addition. A screw with one hundred threads to the inch is that usually employed; this gives to each division in the scale in the eye-piece the value of 1⁄100th of an inch. The edge of the milled head is also divided into the same number of parts.
Micrometer scale to drop into Eye-piece.
