Microscope for a child:

I receive calls from good concerned parents all the time, and with more or less successes I destroy some perceptions on future scientific success of their offspring’s in most of the cases.

They all mean well, and all of them want to buy compound microscopes.

First question I shall humbly ask is if any of the parents or relatives works in a lab.

If it’s so, then we are OK and let’s go to buy one or more.

In case you don’t know, specimen preparation is not exactly like creating a work of art, but it is not very far from it. After many years (to many), working with microscopes, I can successfully make great slides from my saliva, several living blood samples (with mixed results nobody can explain), probably stool slide for our dog and fairly good steak. That is without going to the workshop and use one of the microtomes sitting on the shelf. Not much, don’t you think? So, who will supply the slides? Well. We can sell you some prepared slides, $ 20.00  a box or more, but how long will you repeatedly look on them without getting tired? We can put the things in a closet (it is not a chemistry kit and won’t eat the floor), or we can give up a compound scope and go for Stereo microscope. That is fun! You can take a live insect in a Petri dish (don’t squeeze it please), study the monster’s behavior, alive, look trough a plant leave, inspect a stone or wife’s false diamonds, and if we want to be really useful? Wait for the summer in your garden or real work in workshop and pull out some splinters from any limb like a WW2 army surgeon. It works!

For your child –A Stereo microscope. Never fails. You can keep it on your kitchen counter unless your husband expropriates it for his important research in the garage or workshop, and I bet you, you will never get bored.

Joseph Zeman                                                                January 26, 2004