So This Is Christmas

Merry Christmas is such an infectious feeling I like to feel that way all year around.

So if you are visiting just before Christmas, just after Christmas or even here on Christmas day I am sure you will find something of interest for you and in the spirit of Christmas.

It may be said that Christmas is no longer a celebration but this must be spoken by people that have never had trouble closing their eyes on Christmas Eve in an expectation of what maybe left for them on the carpet under the tree.

I continue to look forward to the surprise on my Grandchild's faces to this day at Christmas events.

Merry Christmas - Merry Christmas - Merry Christmas

Saturday, February 26, 2011

Passion for Unseen Worlds

By Nikki Smith


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.

I looked at everything I could get my hands on under that little microscope. That winter was quite unusual. I was amazed and fell in love with the assortment and exquisiteness of the snowflakes. Shown as a magnificent gift of majestic creation, every snowflake was a work of art, each one is unique in its fragile daintiness.

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. Formed like a lentil seed, these parts of magnifying glasses were termed as lenses.

The original microscope was made up of a small pipe with a lens attached to an end and a plate on the other end. The lens amplifies ten times the size of the object that is placed on the plate. They used to call it flea glasses as well because of their curiosity on examining fleas and other insects with it.

In 1590, Zaccharias Janssen and his son Hans discovered that objects can seem bigger as a result of their testing on various lenses in a tube. In the years that succeeded, the device continues to upgrade as more scientists pitch in what they've learned and applied.In 1609, Galileo made his contribution by improving the principles of the lenses with a focusing device. Nevertheless, Anton Van Leeuwenhoek, a Dutch scientist, is known to have introduced microscopy. He used a magnifying glass to conduct thread counts on fabric when he took a job as a novice in the dry goods store. He became skillful with the lenses and curved ones that can amplify objects up to 270 diameters.He began to build microscopes and eventually made biological discoveries that made him famous. He is the first to record microscopic observations of bacteria, yeast plants, organisms in water and blood flow in capillaries.What a moment that must have been. 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.

Microscopes vary in shapes and sizes. You can buy one for your child to shift his interest on finding out specimens unseen by the naked eye. Other fields that use this as well are in the manufacturing and engineering sectors, scientific studies and medical field. Without a doubt and despite the size, it will still be intriguing to look through the lens.




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1 comment:

Peter said...

Microscope play a very important role on microbiology!! Light Microscope

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