What, you ask, is that thing? It's an adapter that lets me plop the digital camera onto the microscope, perfectly aligned, and leave it there, hands free. This not only frees my hands to move specimens around, it also ends the annoying wobble of a handheld camera. In the case of high magnification, handheld wasn't just difficult: it was impossible. But now - - O delight - - we can use the compound microscope in class, showing the specimens on the big screen TV!
The new stereomicroscope has some prodigious powers of magnification, as shown in this progressive series zooming in on a zinnia.
I am having some trouble getting the images correct on the TV. I think the microscope light is too intense, and the TV tends to flare to all red. I need to try the low-power setting on the light source.
Silver Surfers were also dispatched to do The Weighing Work, with my little digital scale.
The big deal for the K class was our formerly out sick student was back again so I could do the demo that had been secretly planned the previous week. He had submitted a huge heap of questions all of the form
What does the inside of _____ look like?
The Science answer is
I dunno. Let's go find out!
He had asked (among other things) about the insides of electrical cords, batteries, and hearts.
We cut open an electrical cord with a stern advance warning of Do NOT Try This At Home.
We cut open a battery
with a sterner advance warning of Do NOT Try This At Home, reinforced by the vivid example of Your Science Specialist wearing goggles and gloves, and newspaper carefully spread out to a great distance, and the follow up of Your Science Specialist cleaning the site twice just to be sure of complete hazmat removal. Notice also, in the photo, that the battery crud seems to have eaten a hole in the newspaper. Yummy!
In the process we discover another Science answer
Well that's pretty interesting, but now there's more I don't know
Like, what's the gray goop? What's the black goop? Why a wire attached to one end and not the other? ( "One is zinc and the other is copper", a student cheerfully informs me. By now I have learned to take this stuff in stride when it come to Primavera students, and I wouldn't even have blinked if he started telling me that anodes oxidize and cathodes reduce).
As for hearts, why, they're available at your local HEB in the beef section. They seem to consist mostly of . . . well . . . meat, with a hollow spot for the heart chamber. Advance notice was provided, whereby those who felt that hacking up meat in science class was a little too gross could move to a quiet table at a safe distance.
Another Science answer here is
Things are what they are
You may find it gross or creepy, but it was there, and it was the way it was, before you looked at it; it will be that way after you are done looking at it; in between, the choice to open or close your eyes is your own.
Feel free to vote in the poll (at the right hand side of the screen)
No comments:
Post a Comment