Yet Another Cycling Forum
General Category => The Knowledge => OT Knowledge => Topic started by: The Family Cyclist on 07 June, 2019, 09:51:37 am
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My eldest monkey is an inquisitive sort. Today she has taken some wasp nest we had in our roof space and a wasp gall.
Her birthday is next month and I remembered the great Roger Deakin said about buying a child a microscope
I'm thinking this would make a great present so after recommendations, don't want to spend a huge amount incase it gets broken. Having done a bit of googling there seems to be a lot of digital ones now. Are these better then the traditional sort?
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We had a digital one when Pcolbeck junior was small. No they arent better in the precision and absolute resolution sense than a traditional one but for kids they are more fun (so long as they have access to a PC).
The good points are usually better depth of field that a traditional microscope and you don't need to prepare slides. Great for looking at pond life etc. pLus you can record videos of what you see.
For general interest I would go digital but check the reviews and see what's robust and child friendly.
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Ideally I wouldn't want it to have to be connected to a pc to view so can take out and about. We do have a laptop if required for uploads etc
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How old is your eldest?
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She will be 8
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I would probably buy a normal analogue field microscope then for outdoors and maybe a digital one for at home. I don't think you can get any digital field microscopes that record to a card but have normal optical viewing as well, they would come with either a screen of their own (spendy) or some kind of link to a mobile phone as a screen. These things get expensive really quickly.
Plenty of decent cheapish field microscopes out there and they are robust, check google for reviews.
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I had a basic microscope as kid – sturdy little thing with a mirror and light source and three optics. Came in the little kit with slides, balsam, and stains. I'm to this day not sure why or how I got this considering my parents were never especially interested in my proto-academic endeavours.
But anyway, it was the best. If I had a kid, I'd buy one for them. Then take it off it off them for me.
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You can get adapters to attach a phone to the lens, to let you take photos. Maybe simpler/cheaper than a digital microscope.
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As a child of a medical microbiologist, I found any microscope that was cheap enough to be used without adult supervision to be an exercise in disappointment. Once you've cultured your own lurgy, embiggenating creepy crawlies and bits of plant fluff is rather meh.
Though I am increasingly tempted by one of those newfangled digital ones, for fiddly electronics work and allowing barakta to properly inspect the side of her own head.
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I rescued my old optical microscope from my parents loft. Needs a new incandescent bulb unless I can find an LED replacement. Free to a good home. I’ll even include the dissecting kit .
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You had me at dissecting kit....stupid question but does the bulb require it to be plugged in to the mains or is it battery powered?
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I think it can take a mains feed, but I’ve never had an adapter for it, so power is via 2 x AAs or reflected light from a mirror.
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FWIW you can take photos using a digital camera, or use it as a display etc by simply pointing it down the eyepiece of a standard microscope. If you want to do this on a regular basis you can make a little (wooden?) gizmo that holds the camera in exactly the right place. Thus almost any 'proper' microscope can easily be made to do much more than it was originally designed to do.
You don't get the extra depth of field etc of a USB microscope, but you do get a better introduction into 'proper microscopy'.
cheers
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I rescued my old optical microscope from my parents loft. Needs a new incandescent bulb unless I can find an LED replacement. Free to a good home. I’ll even include the dissecting kit .
The microscope I received for my 12th birthday (1970) ran off two AA batteries and used a (?2.4V) screw cap torch bulb. It had a mirror on the other side of the bulb holder, so could use other light sources.
I found the field of view frustratingly small, especially at high magnification. I think it had three objectives.
The school and university microscopes were SO much better though!
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I had a basic microscope as kid – sturdy little thing with a mirror and light source and three optics. Came in the little kit with slides, balsam, and stains. I'm to this day not sure why or how I got this considering my parents were never especially interested in my proto-academic endeavours.
But anyway, it was the best. If I had a kid, I'd buy one for them. Then take it off it off them for me.
*Laughs*
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Andrew Im sure my eldest monkey would give the microscope a good home. I can cover carriage if you want to pm me details
Thanks
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I'd still get her a field/pocket microscope. They're great fun.
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It's no joke that I was convinced for quite a while that I'd discovered alien life forms in a local puddle. I spent ages cataloguing them. Anyway, I have a botany degree now, so I'm a bit wiser.
I'm still convinced that Number Stations are aliens though.
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Andrew Im sure my eldest monkey would give the microscope a good home. I can cover carriage if you want to pm me details
Thanks
It's a "Regent" . which seems to have been marketed as a "student microscope" , 2 x eyepieces & 3 x objective lenses. I had 2 boxes of sample slides, but they appear to have been dumped. PM me an address & I'll find a box & pop it in the post.
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My sister got a microscope as a kid for Xmas but was never interested. I got something equally uninteresting to me that Xmas. Both got put away and forgotten. Then I found the microscope and asked to use it. That led to a deal where we swapped Xmas presents (about 6 months afterwards). I suspect we opened each others presents due to a mistake by our parents when they labelled them.
I think they're a very good present but only if the child shows signs of being interested and they're old enough to use it properly too. Otherwise it might be a waste.
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I was more than ready for my microscope. Cheap gift optics are often a disappointment.
David spends AGES helping people with mediocre telescopes and dreadful mounts.
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So mainly due to having been out the country for her birthday we have the monkey her microscope yesterday and she loved it.
Question we got a feather and a leaf and could see them really well. However I made up a slide from a bit of clear plastic as need to get some slides and we tried looking at a hair and could only see the light underneath, same if we just tried the hair on its own.... What am I doing wrong?
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We used to start on low magnification, get that centred and focused, then step up magnification, recentring and refocusing each time. You've probably tried that, though...
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Also starting at the top of the slide and working down.
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I made up a slide from a bit of clear plastic as need to get some slides and we tried looking at a hair and could only see the light underneath, same if we just tried the hair on its own.... What am I doing wrong?
three problems;
1. to see something thin like a hair you need to use reflected light (not transmitted light) and (if you are using a camera which automatically sets the light balance) the hair needs to be mounted on a background of similar reflectivity as the hair, otherwise the camera will set itself for the background light intensity. A small piece of card or matte plastic would be ideal, in a middlingly dark colour.
2. Microscope slides don't look fancy but they are; plastic may look transparent and non reflective but under the microscope it may be otherwise.
3. At high magnification the lens focal length is very short. Hence slide cover slips are made very thin. If you are trying to use a piece of plastic as a cover slip it could easily be too thick to allow focus, even if it is suitably transparent (which most plastics are not)
hth
cheers
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Why don't you contact your local University Chemistry/Biology departments?
We really throw away a lot of that stuff these days, 'cause nobody knows what to do with old microscopes, which were top of the range expensive kit 40 years ago
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BTW just to clarify; very many (old, basic) microscopes are set up for (mainly biological) work with slides, i.e. using transmitted light (from below). The (rarer)alternative is a microscope that uses reflected light; if they have high magnification also, these are meant mainly for metallurgical work. BITD only a very few high magnification microscopes had the capability to use both reflected and/or transmitted light. [I am fortunate enough to own one; a Reichert 'Zetopan', but this is very much not a children's microscope.]
So a basic biological microscope has a lamp/mirror below the stage, and a stage that has a hole or a glass plate in it, to allow transmitted light work. Normally opaque materials, when sliced thin enough, can transmit enough light to allow good viewing this way.
When viewing something like a hair, you probably need to turn off the transmitted illumination and instead position a strong light source to the side of the stage, i.e. just above parallel to the stage.
cheers