Liaison and article text by their teacher Erin Coyle.

 Someone asked me once, “What’s your favorite thing to teach?”  The microscopes,  I answered.  “I love watching the kids learn to use microscopes.”  There are so many things I love during our microscope season.  I love to hear their startled outbursts when they see microbes zipping around in what they thought was barren water.  I love to catch them jerking their heads away from the eyepiece because “it seemed like the creature was right there!”  I never tire of looking at yet another Cyclops.  I have even feigned amazement at magnified air bubbles because one of my kids tugged me over to see “an egg.”

I love watching the kids become fluent with their microscopes.  They start to fine-tune their skills with each other and I hear things like “Dude, try the darkfield technique with the onion cells” and “That’s 40x, not 400x!”  They are getting pretty picky these days, too, and wonder if there’s anything “bigger” than 400x . . . like 1000x!  

They want to put everything and anything under their microscopes:  pencil marks, eraser parts, gummy bears, hair, eyelashes, notebook paper, Kleenex tissue.  One particular girl went the extra mile.  She came up to me quietly, after class, her hand shoved into her pocket.  She withdrew her hand, showing a piece of crumpled baggie.  She asks me, in her lovely up-turned Hispanic accent:

“I cut my hand? This weekend?  Can I look at my skin?”  It is the essence of discovery.

The  7th grade science students at Orchard Middle School in Wenatchee, Washington (USA) made these scientific drawings of various pond microbes.  They first made small-scale models of pond ecosystems (deli cups with gravel, dirt and pond water), and then sampled their water over several weeks to see what changes occurred.  When the first copepod showed itself, the game was on!  They were required to find, capture, magnify and draw 3 microbes from their pond.  

The kids use Nasco High School Microscopes with 1.25 ABBE condenser and iris diaphragms, and for darkfield illumination they simply rotate the filter-holder to block the direct light.  They love to make things “glow in the dark!”  Most kids are 12, some are just turning 13.  These are their first real scientific drawings.  Enjoy.  

Eric Espinoza

Ignacio Molinero

Kayla Morgan

Maggie Chvilicek

Eduardo Ramirez

Morgan Alcombrack

Zuleima Rocha

Riley Blanchard

Juan Rios

Juan Padilla

Comments to the teacher / students are welcome. Email Erin Coyle.