kids solar system

kids solar system

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A microscope is a great educational gift for a child. Here I'm going to tell you what to look for in a good microscope and where to get the best deal available at the moment.

The microscope was invented in the late seventeenth century and for most of the time since then has been an expensive, professional instrument, often costing thousands of dollars. In recent times though, the development of plastics and electronics has brought easy to use, powerful microscopes within the reach of everyone.

Two sorts of microscope are available for childrens' use: the traditional turret type and the much newer electronic type that plugs into the USB port of your PC. I'll be writing about the USB type in another article but here, if you'll excuse the pun, I'm going to focus on the turret type since these give children a much better idea of what true scientific research is like.

1. Look for a microscope with a metal body. These will be much heavier and therefore more stable when a child peers down the eyepiece. Small, lightweight microscopes move around all over the place when you try to look down them and are to be avoided at all costs.
2. Try, if possible, to get a microscope with LED illumination. This type is fairly new but the LED type has the great advantage that the lights themselves generate almost no heat. It used to be a continual problem with filament lamp microscopes that the heat from the bulb would dry out specimens in next to no time. If kids are taking their time over what they're looking at then they need lighting that won't ruin the specimens before they've really seen what they are. LED lamps also have the additional advantage of producing a whiter light than a filament bulb so the colors your kids will see will be all the more realistic.
3. Make sure that the lenses are precision ground optical glass. Optical glass is of higher density than, say, window glass, so, for a given magnification the lenses can be considerably thinner. This reduces what is a common problem in cheap lenses; it's called chromatic aberration and is the technical name for the colored rings around the edges of objects that you'll see when you look down your microscope.
4. Make sure the microscope comes with a complete kit of accessories. Trying to dissect or manipulate specimens without the proper tools just ruins them.

Discover where to get a really good metal-bodied microscope with precision optics and a full set of accesories for your kids without having to pay the earth for it. Best Microscope For Kids

The Solar System (Kids' book) 1/3