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.