Today I Learned (TIL)

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TIL A microscope can simply be reversed to make a telescope. Both telescopes and microscopes were in use in Holland by the end of the sixteenth century (www.bristol.ac.uk)

submitted 5 months ago by partybot@lemmy.ca to c/til@lemmy.ca

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[–] vormadikter@startrek.website 19 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

Optical Emgineer reporting in.

This is bullshite.

Read for yourselves:
https://www.quora.com/Can-we-use-a-microscope-as-a-telescope-by-just-inverting-it

What you can learn today is, that if you use a microscope "the other way around", something big is imaged into somethjng small on the focal plane.
Zeiss, a company that manufactures a shitton of optical stuff, has a very successful semi-conductor branch. That branch started off when some engineers from the microscope-department fiddled around with " inverted" microscopes during their lunchtime to create the first optics for lithography from Zeiss.

Source: i worked there. I know those engineers.

[–] SoleInvictus@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I'm a microbiologist and the first thing I thought is this is a person with a homework question asking why you can't flip a microscope to make a telescope. What better way to get the right answer than to confidently proclaim on the Internet bad information as fact? Then I was it's a bot copying content from Reddit and now feel gross.

[–] Akasazh@feddit.nl 5 points 5 months ago

Tbh that's in a modern sense, historically a microscope was just a single lense, which could be used for both (as far as I know). And the Dutch had the best lense makers and innovators that developed the optie technology early on.

[–] voracitude@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago

I'm thinking about going back to school. What did you have to study to get into optical engineering? Is it a branch of mechanical engineering? And what's the daily like in that field?

[–] WhiteOakBayou@lemmy.world 5 points 5 months ago

If I look through the big hole in the bottom I just see two points of light. Down voted.

[–] CookieOfFortune@lemmy.world 5 points 5 months ago

Maybe in the simplest sense but it’d be pretty difficult to do either with a modern device.