Personally, I think everyone should try opening up a chip. It's easy (if the chip isn't in epoxy) and fun to look inside. You need a metallurgical microscope to examine the chip closely, but you can see interesting features even with the naked eye.
An external light works for something like an inspection microscope. But as you increase the magnification, you need something like a metallurgical microscope that focuses the light where you are looking. Otherwise, the image gets dimmer and dimmer as you zoom in.
*"Below" meaning "on the opposite side from the objective" - you illuminate _through_ the sample.
Biological microscopes, on the other hand illuminate the sample from the back side (which doesn't work for fully opaque objects).