What's the most smallest object that can be seen through the latest microscopes?
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I think the other answerers have a few misconceptions.\n\nThe problem with your question is the use of the word "seen."\nSo I will answer your question in two parts.\n\n1) The best visible wavelength (optical) microscopes cannot see atoms. The best they can probably do, is see some of the fine detail of biological cells, nothing more.\n\n2) Using the term loosely, electron microscopes or atomic force microscopes can "see" atoms, and even electron clouds, but one should not take the word "see" too literally.\n\nAn atomic force microscope works by moving a very fine tip  over a sample. Without going into the specifics of it, a computer can build up a model of the shape and dimensions of atoms in the sample by measuring the forces that the atoms exert on the tip.\n\nSo I will state the answer to your question as this:\n\nWe CAN OBSERVE computer images of atoms; by this i mean that we can view computer images of atoms - but these are more like graphs of interatomic forces than actually viewing atoms.\nThe highest precision that can currently be achieved is viewing the electron clouds of various atoms. We cannot directly observe anything smaller than this.\n\nSo, you might ask, how do we know about the existence of particles like electrons, protons, neutrons, or even quarks?\nWell, that's because their existences can be inferred from various experiments.\n\nE.G. Rutherford's Alpha Scattering experiment showed that atoms consist of mostly empty space (in support of our massive nucleus and electron clouds model)\n\nAnd particle physicists can use devices a bit like cloud chambers to "observe" fundamental particles like quarks by accelerating e.g. protons high speeds and then making them crash into each other. This liberates particles smaller than protons, giving evidence for the existence of quarks.\n\nHowever, these particles are "observed" by the effect that they have on the surrounding medium, not by direct observation.\n\n\nSo to sum up, the atomic force microscope is the best microscope for "viewing" atoms, but don't take this literally. It's resolution allows us to examine the electron clouds of individual atoms.\n\n\nAlso note that "Electron clouds" is also not to be taken too literally, as anyone who knows anything about quantum mechanics will tell you.
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Photons.\n\nI've heard of wavicles, but I think that sounds like a frozen dessert.
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small insects/small vish
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electron microscope\nn.\nAny of a class of microscopes that use electrons rather than visible light to produce magnified images, especially of objects having dimensions smaller than the wavelengths of visible light, with linear magnification approaching or exceeding a million (10 to th power 6).\n\nA device that uses electrons instead of light to form images of very small objects, such as individual parts of small living things. \n\na microscope that is similar in purpose to a light microscope but achieves much greater resolving power by using a parallel beam of electrons to illuminate the object instead of a beam of light\n\nThe electron microscope is a microscope that can magnify very small details with high resolving power due to the use of electrons as the source of illumination, magnifying at levels up to 2,000,000 times. \n\nHistory \nThe first electron microscope was built by the German physicist Ernst Ruska. He knew that electrons possess a wave aspect, so he believed he could treat them in a fashion similar to light waves. Ruska was also aware that magnetic fields could manipulate electrons, possibly focusing them as optical lenses do to light. After confirming these principles through research, he set out to design an electron microscope. Ruska had deduced that an electron microscope would be much more powerful than an ordinary optical microscope, because he knew that magnification increased with shorter wavelengths. Since electron waves were shorter than ordinary light waves, it followed that they would allow for greater magnification. In 1933 Ruska and a collaborator, German physicist Max Knoll, under whom he obtained his doctorate, built the first crude electron microscope. Despite the fact that it was primitive and not fit for practical use, the instrument was still capable of magnifying objects 400 times. Ruska was later awarded the Nobel Prize in 1986 for its invention. \n\nThe first practical electron microscope was built by Eli Franklin Burton and students, Cecil Hall, James Hillier and Albert Prebus, at the University of Toronto, Canada in 1938. \n\nAlthough modern electron microscopes can magnify an object 2 million times, they are still based upon Ruska's prototype and his correlation between wavelength and magnification. The electron microscope is an integral part of many laboratories. Researchers use it to examine biological materials (such as microorganisms and cells), a variety of large molecules, medical biopsy samples, metals and crystalline structures, and the characteristics of various surfaces. \n\nTypes \nElectron beam micmroscopes \nTransmission Electron Microscope (TEM) \nThe Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM) involves a high voltage electron beam emitted by a cathode and formed by magnetic lenses. The electron beam that has been partially transmitted through the very thin (and so semitransparent for electrons) specimen carries information about the inner structure of the specimen. The spatial variation in this information (the "image") is then magnified by a series of magnetic lenses until it is recorded by hitting a fluorescent screen, photographic plate, or light sensitive sensor such as a CCD (charge-coupled device) camera. The image detected by the CCD may be displayed in real time on a monitor or computer. \n\nResolution of the high-resolution TEM (HRTEM) is limited by spherical and chromatic aberration, but a new generation of aberration correctors has been able to overcome spherical aberration. Software correction of spherical aberration has allowed the production of images with sufficient resolution to show carbon atoms in diamond separated by only 0.89 ångström (89 picometers) and atoms in silicon at 0.78 ångström (78 picometers) at magnifications of 50 million times. The ability to determine the positions of atoms within materials has made the HRTEM an indispensable tool for nano-technologies research and development in many fields, including heterogeneous catal
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With a conventional bright field microscope, light from an incandescent source is aimed toward a lens beneath the stage called the condenser, through the specimen, through an objective lens, and to the eye through a second magnifying lens, the ocular or eyepiece. Most microscopes will have a built-in illuminator.\n\nI hope that helps
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Electron microscopes are used to magnify details up to 500,000 times their normal size. However, due to diffraction, even the best optical microscope (the kind you are probably used to using) is limited to a resolution of 0.2 micrometers. (One micrometer is 0.000001 meter.)
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Largest blue whale, about the size of a small car.The smallest mammalian heart would belong to the estruscan shrew I would guess
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They average 145 microns in diameter. See the ref. (about halfway down the page).
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smallest to largest in a multicellular organism.\ncell-tissue-organ-organ system-organism
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C\n\nThe ribosomes are far to small to see with a ligh microscope. Under an electron microscope, they look like tiny dots (of whatever color you stained them).\n\nAlso, you won't be able to make out the details of the cell membrane either, only that it exists.
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Milk Carton Periscope:\nhttp://pbskids.org/zoom/activities/sci/periscope.html
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a double convex lens will magnify, i can't remember which ones reduce size, but i'm guessing some sort of concave lens, and lenses REFRACT light, while mirrors REFLECT light.
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Most light microscopes (or at least the ones I used) have a "arrow" in the eye lense that can measure specimens if aligned correctly. It also varied on magnification.
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Magnifying glass to locate if you can't see them just by looking and tweezers to pick up and put in evidence bag
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its not a matter of how sharp, but how small
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they are easily seen under a microscope. As far as i know, without physiological equipment, it's the only way to see them...
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I think it's official: Apple's newest (clip) Ipod shuffle is the smallest.