Saturday, February 26, 2011

Microscope - Yet another World Through The Lens

By Effie Georges


My parents always encouraged me to be whatever I wanted to be, so when I expressed my desire for a microscope when I was eight years old, they encouraged my 'inner child scientist.It was that Christmas that I received a microscope and spent hours in tiny, fascinating worlds accompanied by visions of winning a Nobel Peace Prize for a scientific discovery of some new form of life, cure for a disease or something that would benefit all of humanity.

It made me look things in another perspective when I used that small microscope of mine.We had a rare snowfall that winter, and it was the diversity and beauty of the snowflakes that captured my heart and made me hold my breath in awe and wonderment. Each snowflake was a beauty in its own intricate artwork, like a marvelous present handed from above.

It was the invention of glass lenses, or a combination of lenses with the use of a light microscope that enables to magnify these little worlds and make them visible to the human eye. According to the scriptures of Seneca, Pliny the Elder, and the Roman philosophers that magnifiers, burning glasses (it burned the item below it as it is exposed against the sunlight) and magnifying glasses were already used during 100 A.D.These pieces of magnifying glasses were called lenses because they were shaped like the seed of a lentil.

The earliest microscope was just a tube with a plate for the object at one end and a magnification lens that enlarged objects ten times its size on the other.These lenses were also called flea glasses because of the fascination of viewing fleas and other insects.

Zaccharias Janssen and his son Hans conducted a study in 1590 on the levels of amplification with the use of numerous lenses in a tube. They found out that the object's image can be blown up.The instrument improved over the years as different inventors added their knowledge and expertise. A lens with a focusing device was Galileo's contribution in the microscope's enhancement in 1609.But, it is Anton Van Leeuwenhoek of Holland that is considered the father of microscopy.He started as an apprentice in a dry goods store and used a magnifying glass to count the threads in cloth. He was able to make lenses that curved up to 270 diameters of amplification after learning how to sharpen and refine them. Ultimately, he was known as the father of microbiology with the use of the microscope that he developed.He is credited as the first to see bacteria, yeast plants, the life living in droplets of water, and the circulation of blood in the capillaries. It must have been a breathtaking moment. Small additions were added until Charles A. Spencer, an American scientist of the 19th century discovered how to produce the finest optics that can magnify up to 1250 diameters using natural light and 5000 diameters using blue light.

There are all sizes and shapes of microscopes - one to suit and encourage your little one to explore different worlds, and those for industrial, scientific and medical use.No matter the size, it is surely to fascinate.




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