Posted in Homeschooling Through Highschool

I am so intrigued by what can be found under the objective lens of a microscope! We examined quite a few specimens the other day.  The photo below is a sample of Diatoms , they are yellow-green algae that have cell walls made of silicon dioxide, the main component in glass, which gives them a brittle structure. You can see small oil spots that are stored food: rather than storing extra food in vacuoles, diatoms convert it to oil.  You may have heard of something called diatomaceous earth - a light soil consisting of siliceous diatom remains and often used as a filtering material.  This is what we use in our swimming pool filtration system.
  

There are so many helpful educational microscopy sites but I wanted to share a couple with those of you who may not yet own a microscope and you would like to check out some virtual microscope sites.

• Molecular Expressions
  I could spend the whole afternoon at this website!  There is an abundance of interactive java applets to assist the homeschooling family.  The applet you will see is from the Intel Play QX3 Web Microscope.  The specimen is an aoemba at 40x magnification.  Some families become very intimidated at the thought of highschool science, but why?  Now the fun begins!!!!
• Virtual Microscope
  This site has a really nifty interactive compound microscope.  It will really give you  a feel for what a microscope is made up of.  Take your time!
• Virtual Microscope
  This is a short online class from Discovery School.  It's excellent!  Here is the objective for the online lesson. Students will understand the following:
  1.    how microscopes have contributed to our knowledge of life science.
  2.    the basic differences between plant and animal cells.