Microscope kit for 2011 Summer Roadshow

Microscopes are now in 4 boxes.

2 x Slide microscopes:
The slide microscopes are in two small blue boxes- each set is labelled either alpha or beta to help stop them getting muddled up. In each box there’s the main body of the microscope (stored in two pieces, undo the screw, slot together, tighten screw), and 4 lenses in small pots. Unscrew the lenses from the lids of the pots, and screw them in to the lower part of the microscope. The upper lenses are stored in the same box as the microscope slides- you won’t really need them if you’re using the microscope cameras and the CHaOS laptops to show visitors the slides. Though feel free to use them, especially if for some reason you don’t have access to one of the CHaOS laptops.

Dissecting microscope:
The dissecting microscope is in a small grey box on its own. This is good for introducing microscopes in primary schools, though you’ll need to find some props to use with it. Everyday objects like money and textiles are good to look at with this. You can always raid the CHaOS food boxes for stuff like lettuce, kiwis and tomatoes, or look outside for a selection of leaves. There’s a couple of squishy toy microscopes in the box too (just for fun!)

Microscope slides:
This box contains:
• 5 x boxes of slides for the slide microscopes (labelled man-made materials, human body, invertebrates, plants and microbes)
• A box of lenses for the slide microscopes (labelled alpha and beta)
• A box of accessories for the microscopes (dust covers and anything else you might want)
• A magnifying glass (to show that lenses can make an image bigger)
• A ruler (which can sometimes help to explain scale)
• Cameras for the microscopes (1 x silver, 1 x black and 2 x low res for backup), which work like webcams when attached to the CHaOS microscopes. (The software has shortcuts on the desktop of each of the CHaOS laptops)
• Laminated sheets with extra info for the 3 x slides in a pond life food chain that are in the invertebrate box (water organisms -> daphnia -> hydra)
• 3 x microscope books, which might give you some ideas for demos

How to explain what microcopes do/ what cells are

All sorts of things can be viewed down a microscope! Depending on where you are and the time of year these might include the biology lesson classic of an onion skin, the shapes of salt and sugar crystals, the eye of the insect you found in your tent, a drop of puddle water... we also have a large number of different slides (many described below) and a pillow-style model of a cell to help explain what cells are, and what different specialised cell types do.

Sometimes a webcam connection is available and the field of view from the microscope can be shown on a laptop too.
The best things to use the microscope to look at will always be dictated by the interests of the demonstrator- a cell biologist might prefer to use it to explain cell structures, what they're for, etc, whereas a zoologist to examine the anatomy of a fly, beetle or earwig.

Ideas to explain (particularly focussed on cells)...
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Younger children

- Introduce to the idea of a cell by using model, and looking at cells down the microscope
- Use the model to explain what's inside a cell (nucleus is the 'control centre', mitochondria 'make' energy)
- Cells are very small (typically 10 um for an animal cell... that's 1000 times smaller than 1 cm (you can use the ruler to show 1 cm)
- Not all cells are the same - you can look at red blood cells (the reason why blood looks red when you cut yourself!), and the columnar epithelium slide has lots of different shaped cells visible.
- Bacteria are also cells, but they are smaller and don't have a nucleus (associate bacteria with disease e.g. food poisoning caused by E. coli). Bacteria can be lots of different shapes (look at E. coli, Staphylococcus, Spirillum).

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Older children

(in addition to the above)
- Other internal components of cells e.g. DNA in the nucleus (can relate to kiwi fruit experiment if they've already done this), ribosomes, endoplasmic reticulum, golgi and what they do
- Plant cells - cell walls and chloroplasts (we have a root tip squash slide where the cell walls are visible and the nuclei are nicely stained, but they don't have chloroplasts because it's a root so it doesn't need to photosynthesise! If they want to see more plant cells, there's a whole demo on plants...)
- Specialization - red blood cells, nerve cells, epithelium in intestine, liver cells, muscle cells etc (see below for photos of our slides)
- Fungi - also eukaryotic cells - yeast are unicellular. Penicillium grows as mycelium. (See below)
- Cell division - chromosome spread, mitosis (see below)

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Possibly useful background information and ideas
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What are cells?

- Cells are analogous to a building brick - houses are built of lots of bricks, like people are built of lots of cells (50-75 trillion!)
- Cells aren't just bricks - they are alive, and make things, use things, and process information
- They do that because inside their fatty outer membrane, they contain lots of other things
- The nucleus is the 'control centre' of the cell
- It contains lots of instructions on how to make things called proteins, from which the rest of the cell is made
- The instructions are written in a 4-letter code on very long molecules called DNA (see Kiwi DNA experiment)
- You can see DNA in the nucleus in the model
- Cells need to make the proteins using instructions from the DNA in the nucleus
- A copy of the instructions for a single protein are made (RNA) and transported out of the nucleus into the cytoplasm
- Ribosomes 'translate' the language of RNA into the language of protein (ribosomes = buttons on model)
- Proteins that are going to be exported by the cell pass into the ER (endoplasmic reticulum) (ER = very folded bit near nucleus on model!)
- Proteins then move to the Golgi apparatus (other side of nucleus on model) and then on to the cell membrane
- Cells need energy - this is supplied by mitochondria (they convert energy from sugars into ATP, the energy currency of the cell)
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Looking at slides

- Show scale using ruler (eukaryotic (animal/plant/fungal) cell is roughly 10 um in length, bacteria are often smaller than 1 um)
- The nuclei are stained in many of our cells
- We have a variety of different cell types - you can discuss why the cells have particular shapes or features (some background info in the pictures below)
- Cell division - look at chromosome spreads, and slides of dividing cells (by mitosis). Look for different stages of division.

This is just some background info and ideas about what you might want to say; you probably don't want to go through all of this with one set of children (unless they are super-keen and know some of it already!), but choose things to look at guided by what you and they are interested in!