Friday, 15 November 2013

Digital microscopes and education.

Many teachers ask me how digital microscopes can be used. Here are some suggestions from Jill Clothier at Brisbane Boys Grammar School.

The TLI USB Scope 2 is  an excellent microscope for viewing stomata on the underside of leaves.  Plants such as Tradescantia and Begonia with their purple/red colours make good specimens.  Did you know some begonia species have 4 guard cells?  There is no need to do a leaf tear or paint with nail polish and then try to prise the layer off.  The light source is from above so can be used with solid specimens.

Here is a another thing I have discovered:

When using a AverVision document reader( with the TLI Scope measurement software loaded onto the computer) to capture bacterial growth in a petri dish, I was able to use the count function to analyse the culture.