Virtual Microscopes
The University of Queensland in Australia is making electron microscope images available to schools...
Links
The University of Queensland in Australia is making electron microscope images available to schools. Needed capabilities include a power mac and CU-SeeMe. Students can submit specimens for two different microscopes, ask questions of the operator, "zoom" in or out, and conduct teleconferenced discussions with other researchers at other sites. Since many universities and labs in the U.S. also enjoy this capability, schools could replicate the Australian model.
The Knowledge Media Institute in Britain (jime) has prepared a CD which can be used with a microscope to vary images in a 3D environment. This group is organizing a set of tools which use Java and other technologies of the late 90s for using the Web for learning in formats which cannot be accomplished in the real world.
Beckman Instruments has made its huge microscopes and MRI equipment available for students around the world. Information can be collected from remote locations and shared for laboratory investigations. At the Hawaii site images of body cells, pollen, and insect parts can be scanned at the microscopic level; however, a good CD is certainly less costly and more reliable than that site.
Microscopes and the Internet (mwrn)are the subjects of a newsletter, published by MicroWorld. In addition to a huge collection of links, the Digital Version (Biology at Arizona) of a microscope capitalizes on the new technologies.
The high resolution project at Utah integrates recent discoveries into interactive science labs. The Fly's Eye, well, demonstrates such high resolution quite clearly.
BioScope, developed at Purdue, allows the import of video and audio into a database about biology. Students, for instance, could import nanoviews from other sites above into this database. Unlike hard copy, the illustrations would be animated.
IN-VSEE at Arizona State gives high school students access to a virtual scanning-probe microscope. Magnification can range from 3,000 to 40,000 times.
The Exploratorium has garnered thousands of images, because one of its themes is perception. It is making a virtual microscope available at its Imaging Station.
Students can learn about nano-technology without a high-power microscope by studying the effects of stains on clothing.
The Molecularium looks at snowflakes, for example, for carbon and oxygen molecularia. It seems that each generation searches for smaller and smaller particles.
Annotation
These projects are so exciting! Students would not only be exploring new worlds---this time a "nanoworld"--but also acquiring a skill, heretofore unavailable, with telecollaboration to boot.
