Which type of microscope would be best to use if you wanted a 3-Dimenstional view of a virus?

Question

also, Which type of microscope would be best to use if you wanted to look at a living cell?

Answer 1

Virus: transmission electron microscope with tilt holder to allow electron tomography.
Life cells: use of an inverted light microscope. Phase contrast or DIC for unstained sample, live cell stains or more commonly fluorescent protein tagged markers to stain cells.

Answer 2

Electron microscopes provide a 3-D rendering. The problem is that you cannot view living cells, as the process of preparing the samples for electron microscopy kills anything you try to prepare. A living cell would be viewable using a regular light microscope... 2-D view.

Answer 3

Scanning electron microscopes seem to give a 3d impression. You can use it on a virus but not a normal cell since the sample has to be in a vacuum.

Answer 4

A scanning electron microscope is the type normally used to get photos of virii. I think there were also some experiments uses holography by recording the image with a shorter wavelength laser than the one used to vire the image.

Answer 5

Scanning electron microscopy for virii. For living cells, use a light microscope.