Using a clipon

 I was thrown in at the deep end, sent two clipons with no instructions.

Most beginners start out, just holding the clipped-on clip-on against something, but I prefer a set-up like this:   

I added the clipon to my phone, set a skull that was handy in place near three books, then set the phone and clip on in place over the active lens with camera mode started.

You are looking here at a suture in the skull of a dead rabbit, with a few scraps of soil. 

I found that gentle downward pressure brought the object into sharp focus. This is fine for dead things and never-living things, and you get a result like this, using the camera app on a phone or tablet, once you get the clip-on carefully placed over the phone or tablet lens: here, my placement was a bit to one side.

Try photographing some cloth, first: you can see the weave, and also the fibres that make the thread.

Other things to try: currency notes and coins.

 

 

 

 Then try your skin, and some sand:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Embiggening

At one kilometre away, a large house looks tiny, taking up less than one degree on the horizon. A grouse, 30 metres away, looks the same size. So does a mouse, seen from a distance of 6 metres or so, and I imagine that from 7 centimetres, a louse would fill the same angle. The catch is that if our eyes were only 7 cm away from it, many of us would have trouble seeing the louse in focus.

We can focus our eyes because each eye has a squishy lens that the eye muscles squeeze until you see a sharp image on the retina at the back of the eyeball. Move up really close to the house, grouse, mouse or louse, and the image blurs, because the lens in your eye can’t squish enough. When that happens, we need another lens to help.

The standard Sherlock Holmes image from the movies (above, left) shows the wrong way to use a magnifying glass. The correct way (right) has different relative positions for the eye and the lens, and as well, the thing being examined is moved closer. When you use a lens, it is as though your eye is hovering just above the grouse feather or whatever, but still able to bring the image into sharp focus.

My mate Warren Bonnett, once the extraordinary owner of Embiggen Books in Melbourne, and an earlier shop of the same name in Noosaville told me that we have The Simpsons to thank for ‘embiggen’.

I have no idea where ‘smallify’ and ‘smallification’ came from, but they seem to be a decade old. Lenses can also smallify things: if you use binoculars and telescopes in reverse, things look tiny. I used to teach physics, meaning I could explain that, but it’s complicated, so I won’t. Look it up! Still, there’s usually precious little need for smallification.

We might smallify a blue whale, so we could take it all in, but we don’t, because we curious apes are quite good at seeing the bits of something large, and stitching the bits together in our minds. We need embiggeners like microscopes, even simple ones, much more often, but occasionally, it’s hard to see the big picture.

Here are some microscopes:

USB micro-camera, binocular (dissecting) microscope, monocular microscope.

I recommend that beginners start with either a hand lens or a clip-on. The cost is so low that almost anybody can play, and that gets you started. Later, you can move up to microscopes. Young people (and most older people) don’t know where to find interesting material, or how to catch things or how to handle what they catch, so this is a field biologist’s guide, delivering the necessary what, where and how, with a lot of why, and a dash of who and when.

But while I put a lot of efforts into using clip-ons like the GoPro,  

The wanderer returns and he bears a microscope

 Over the past few months, we have been downsizing, moving into age-appropriate accommodation,  and blogging has been low on my priority lists. Last Tuesday, I was offering an antique microscope, which probably no longer works, to my fellow volunteers, mainly for its decorative value.

Jen, whose grandson is in the same class as one of my granddaughters, said her grandson liked looking at things. "I have something better for Finn," I said.

In 2018, I was approached by a start-up: they wanted somebody who could write, knew about microscopes and had interesting ideas, and I had form in all three areas. They had developed a clip-on microscope that worked with tablets and mobile phones. There were two versions, looking like this:

        

They needed curriculum-tied activities, explorations that ticked boxes in the Australian Science Curriculum, a document that reminds me of the definition of a camel: a horse, designed by a committee.

I have a Master's degree in curriculum, and a stack of years as a practical science teacher, and then as a matter-of-fact bureaucrat: I know a total rubbish piece of work when I see it, and this is a total bastard camel, devoid of science but full of feelings and platitudes. Trust me: the people who constructed that document would not have got the gig, had I been in charge.

No matter: in my first six years as a classroom science teacher, I operated an open lab where students were able to drop in before school or at lunch time to use the microscopes, or to quiz me about whatever project I was pursuing. Mainly, they brought in stuff to look at under the microscope, so I am a sort of Pied Piper of microscopy. I know what gets kids going, and they are all things that raise questions.

 

On the left, an ant, captured freehand with a GoPro, on the right, a seagull feather, likewise.

With that background, I jumped at the task. I did it as a pro bono operation, where the IP remained mine, and that gave rise to Looking At Small Things. I got this together, just as the Covid lockdown began, so I raced to get it in print as a way that youngsters in isolation could be educated. Sadly, no publisher would step up to support education, so I self-published.  Don't buy the book: get the Kindle version for $4, but know that I am about to pick the eyes out of it here.

Alas, the GoPro went under as others jumped on the same bandwagon, but I was left with a class set of clip-ons, the classy metal ones with a built-in light, and I am quietly seeding those out to grandparents and grandkids. This is dedicated to Jen, Finn, Pippa and Izzy.

I suggest that you bookmark this page, because I plan to use this as the home page/index for the work I do over the next few weeks. Some of them, I have selected because  (I was a CSIRO Visiting Scientist in a nearby primary school),  my students enjoyed them.

My plan is to start with a few entries on methodology and tricks of the trade, beginning with hand lenses and magnifying glasses, then clip-ons, USB cameras and then, maybe, real microscopes, because they can also support USB cameras.

The index

Embiggening

Using a clipon

For now, scroll the blog for later entries, starting here: The Playwiths set