It’d be a 100x objective lens, that, multiplied with the 10x magnification inherent in the main microscope, will give you 1000x.
Argent, it may be they include some pictures in a CD as part of their educational software.
Again, if you do a blood smear (google for instructions, there is more than one way to do that), you can probably see something like the other picture I linked.
Argent Towers, what are you planning to do with it? If it’s for gee whiz stuff, you may get more value out of a dissecting microscope - no slide prep, just stick the object of interest on the stage, and get a very good closeup view of what you’re looking at. When I taught biology and oceanography, the dissecting 'scopes were always more of a crowd pleaser with respect to worms and bugs, fern spores, where a compound scope requires slide prep, and unless you’re a diatom-ologist - which I was at the time - are pretty boring. A lot of cells look a lot alike. Pollen is pretty though.
Initially I just wanted the “gee whiz” factor but now the idea of learning to prepare slides is actually appealing to me. I know I can do it - I’ve learned darkroom photography, I’ve learned how to draw precise artwork, I’ve learned how to take apart and repair small electronics, I’ve learned how to do all sorts of hands-on, close up work, so I see no reason why I can’t do this as well. The idea of assembling a personal collection of slides, mounted and prepared the proper way, is appealing to me.
Then I should give you a tip. Diatoms are among the most beautiful things on earth.
It’d be far better for you to purchase a student set like mozchron suggested.
You could do some stuff (blood smears, aspirates, impressions), with relatively few equipment, but you’ll at least will need some jars/containers and at the very least DiffQuik dye for doing cytology stuff that I typed above. Or Gram stain dyes to look at bacteria. You could also get some dark stains for spirochetes…
Pretty prepared sections… Dude, that is serious work, it requires a lot of expensive equipment. It is time consuming from beginning to end. It is a career for many people! I’m not saying it is hard to learn how to do it, after all, I learned how to do it and did it for a few years, and to a certain extent, I still do… But I’ve always done it for research or diagnostic purposes, where things are bought in bulk to save some money. It is still expensive and time consuming
You can get a decent microscope for the price you listed. Just stay away from units with plastic bodies or that come with special ‘packages’ in plastic boxes. Not hard to avoid.
For the price you list, you could probably get a monocular microscope with DIN objectives. That will give you excellent optics (some non-DIN will get your pretty good images, but DIN seems to indicate some effort went into the design). You might even get some other features - for example this unit comes with a mechanical stage and coarse/fine focus. (But it doesn’t have an iris diaphragm) it can also have a binocular head added in the future.
It should give you what you want. Don’t get too hung up on models that give you 1000x power, when you get that high you need to use immersion oil to get a decent image and that can be messy.
Heh - there are if you know what you are doing! When I was a undergraduate, my bachelors thesis research was a scanning EM study. I went to a Cal State (not one of the big ones), which was mostly a teaching university without a big research budget. There was no way we could have afforded an SEM. The prof I was working with was very mechanically inclined. He got obsolete 3 broken SEMs donated to the school and cobbled together one working scope! The only thing it cost was the electricity and the liquid N2 for cooling. Oh, he also repaired a broken sputter coater (also donated) so that we could coat specimens and salvaged a cheap thermal printer from a broken gel doc and hooked it up so that we could print the images.
That scope was a trip to use. No computer, tiny 3-inch green cathode ray tube for the image, lots of knobs and buttons. I sat in this completely dark room listening to the whine of the cooling pump (you could tell if it was about to break due to the sound) and felt like a mad scientist. When I finally used a modern scope I was disapointed. It seemed so sterile.
So all you need for a cheap EM is to know someone who builds them as a hobby 
Wanna build an MRI out a microwave?
Well, at least your prof. didn’t make you built your own as part of your PhD projects. 
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My brother got his engineering PhD at MIT and had to do this - they got many hundreds of thousands of dollars from the EPA (bro STILL doesn’t know why) to build I think a scanning tunneling EM. They worked on etch protocols in corroding atmospheres, so bro had to not only build the scope, but also the sample chamber that could withstand the corroding environment and also allow them to manipulate the samples.
Scope was built, and turned out that the room it was in was WAY too noisy for it to work. So bro also had to design and build a floating table to keep it still.
Turned out that the vibrations were being transduced through the piping of the vacuum system and couldn’t be damped. Bro went to boss and said we have to move the scope. Boss said we can’t move it - there is no where to move it to. bro said then we shouldn’t finish it, its a waste of time. Boss said “no, finish it - we have to spend the money - you get it to work”.
So bro had to spend another year working on what he KNEW was a doomed project. In his program they had to do a summer internship at a company. Based on his internship at a major tech company, they gave him a year paid position, and his dissertation ended up being based on the work he did there.
Although it had nothing to do with his eventual thesis project, half his dissertation is on the construction and testing of the scope, chamber and float table. He put it in because “Dammit! I spent 2 and a half years building that f*cking thing!” He tried to take the chamber with him as a trophy when he graduated, but it weighed about 400 pounds and he couldn’t figure out how to get it out of the building.
He works on Wall Street now as a financial analyst
Agent, hope you have learned something here. Microscopy or astronomy is not a simple subject, and most people buying a cheap microscopes or telescope are soon so frustrated that they give it up altogether.
My hobby is microscopy, and there are a lot of good beginner scopes out there for around $500 give or take. You can also look for a good used one.
I strongly recommend that you do some homework by getting library books on the subject. There are a ton of books that will answer all your questions and provide a bunch of things that you can observe yourself. These books will tell you how to prepare slides, where to get specimens, what kinds of eyepieces and objective lenses are available, etc.
Many scopes now have built-in digital cameras, so you can hook them up to a USB port, install the software that comes with them, and then see the specimen fill your monitor. Great way to observe, and you can also see through the eyepiece. Regular scopes can be used with USB digital cameras that just slip into the eyepiece holder.
Again, you gets what you pays for. The cheapie ones with cameras are only 0.3 megapixles, so the picture quality is pretty poor. You need at least a 1.3-3.0 or so megapixel camera to get decent pictures.
Here is just one place with a variety of student scopes you might want to look at. For more, go to good old Google.
Sorry, I hit a comma rather than a dot in the address.
Here is the linky again.
Thanks, Karl, but heh, I beat you by two minutes. 
Yea, I blame my fractured arm for decreasing my typing skills.
Argent, I have a few more thoughts that you might find helpful. The suggestions to use a dissecting scope are good, and it is a inexpensive way to begin. Most have 20X and 40X magnification, and are excellent for looking at insects, insect parts, leaves, flowers, household stuff and a variety of specimens that should be fun and interesting for a long time.
However, know that these magnifications won’t let you look at any of the tiny world, which requires a scope with at least three objective lenses. These usually give magnifications of 40X, 100X and 400X. More expensive ones will have an oil immersion lens that will give 1000X.
Here is what looks like a very good choice. I found that long ago, but now Amazon says “not available.” It is a Celestron, a good company, so you may find it on their site or elsewhere.
I think you initially said you had trouble with binocular scopes, and IMHO, you really don’t need these. Monocular scopes have been used for many years, and my very good scope now is one, and I have no problem enjoying it. They will save you money over binocular ones too.
I can’t recall if your question about seeing blood cells was answered, but you would be surprised at the difference between the size of human, frog and other mammal cells. You would really need at least 100X to really see much.
You can save money by not getting a mechanical stage, but they are very helpful at higher magnifications. Without one, you just have to carefully move the slide around with your fingers. You can get pretty good at this, but at 400X you may do a lot of cussing. Most scopes are drilled so you can buy and add one at a later date.
An irus diaphragm is good, but you can save money without it and get by OK.
If you Google “microscopes,” you can spend a lot of hours looking through hundreds of them, and with any luck, be able to find one to your specs and close to what you are willing to pay. Good luck!
The suggestion about prepared slides is excellent, and a quick way to get into exploring. Many places sell these in sets, so you might want to look into that too.
if you have any more questions, post them here, or send me a message if you want and would be glad to help if I can.
Darn it, i forgot to post thissite for some good and reasonably priced scopes, along with a mess of other microscope accessories.
As someone who uses microscopes for a living, I’m surprised by those that enjoy microscopy as a hobby and then prefer monoculars over binoculars.
Maybe it is because I have to look through them constantly, but just thinking of using one lens to see my slides make my eyes fatigue. Good fitting binoculars let me look through them longer without tiring me out.
I would rather have a binocular.