09:14 – Of course, I couldn’t help myself. When I started thinking yesterday about doing a lab session on mitosis and meiosis, I just had to dive in and get some of my thoughts recorded. I ended up stubbing out that lab session and shooting some images.
That got me thinking about equipment limitations. I was shooting images of a prepared slide of onion root tip mitosis, with several mitotic phases visible in one 400X field of view. I have a truly excellent Chinese microscope, a National Optical model 161 with ASC objectives, but it’s still a Chinese microscope and it still has achromatic objectives. As I was trying to count chromosomes at 1000X, I found myself wondering just how much difference it would make to be using a Zeiss or Leitz model with plan apochromatic objectives. I suspect that detail that was just on the edge of visibility with my microscope would have been clear and easily discriminated with the Zeiss or Leitz scope. Of course, just one objective lens for one of those scopes can cost $5,000 or more, and a complete tricked-out scope with all the options can easily run $50,000.
I just answered a question this morning over on the Well-Trained Minds forum about National Optical microscopes versus no-name/house-branded Chinese microscopes. As usual, a lot of forum members say they bought XXX model and they’re very happy with it. Which is fine. I’m glad they’re happy with what they have, but the reason they’re happy is that they can see something when they look into the eyepiece. They have no basis for comparison, and few of them would know a good microscope if it bit them. If I could sit them down to do a side-by-side comparison among their $250 microscopes, a $500 National Optical scope, and a $5,000 Leitz scope, the scales would fall from their eyes.
Of course, I also recognize that the difference between $250 and $500 may be a deal breaker for a lot of homeschool families. And the truth is that any homeschooler is much better off with whatever microscope they can afford than with no microscope at all. So I suppose I should just shut up about it.
I know several homeschooling families who recently tackled high school bio without doing any lab at all which is very sad to me. So, I supposed buying a cheap microscope and at least attempting to do something is a whole lot better than no lab at all…
RBT, I have a couple questions relating to your home science books. I don’t recall seeing them asked before, but apologies if they’ve been asked and answered already.
Is the Forensics book likely to be available in the next year or so, or ever? I gather there was an ownership or other legal issue. This is of interest to me because one of my kids is interested in chemistry and biology but his eyes light up when discussing forensics.
Of the Chemistry, Biology, and possible Forensics books and lab sets, is there any required or recommended order? I’ll be getting one of the kits for this coming summer when he’s with me and the second for the following summer. I’m too ignorant to have an informed opinion. (I took Bio and Chem in high school, but that was 30 years ago and the labs were minimal with junk scopes and balances. But that’s ok. The football and basketball teams were well funded, so the important stuff was taken care of.)
Thanks (and best wishes for continued growth and profitability)
Let me answer this in a full post rather than a comment.
Those are good questions from SteveF; in my own case, from the perspective of a creaky old adult who wants to both learn stuff I didn’t get to back in high school and college, and then to pass that on to kids who aren’t getting it now. Either where we are now or where we will be moving to in June or July has pretty good lab capabilities built-in, one way or another.
Looking forward to Bob’s post on this overcast northern Vermont day at 30 degrees Farenheit, a heat wave again.
We are having a heat wave ! It is 75 F down here in beautiful Sugar Land, Texas.
Just curious whether a monochromatic filter (or using a variety of them) might avoid the chromatic problems without creating any others that are worse.