Seeing Small Things (and Thinking Big!)

The magic of making the really small things big enough to explore....

Super Vision One of the fun questions we ask children at IslandWood to get them to think about senses and our physical capabilities is "What Superpower would you want to have?" One of my stock answers is "Microscopic Vision" so I can see tiny things.

Armed with photos from the National Geographic Magazine showing a dust mite about 10,000 times larger than normal, I begged my parents for a microscope. I'll never forget when I got it and took my first look at a honey bee I had found on a window sill. In a blink of the eye, there were suddenly hundreds of new worlds to explore!

That first microscope cost me a year of savings from mowing lawns, raking leaves and shoveling snow. Little did I know that I could have been hooked by the proceeds from just one lawn mowing job if I knew what to get.

Consider that there are basically two types of microscopes, high power and low power. You would use a high power microscope for looking at very tiny things like bacteria, blood cells, life in pond water, cells and insect legs. The low power microscopes are used to look at larger things like a bee, a fly, fabric weaves, coins, stamps and sand grains. Many of these are now digital, too, so you can hook them up to the computer and take pictures or movies. If you are shopping for a child, DO NOT purchase a plastic toy microscope, they will do nothing but frustrate you and/or your child. (A buyer's guide is listed below.)

The typical Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) will take up a room, let you see things 1,000,000 times larger than normal (almost to the atomic level) and only set you back $200,000 or so. (I did see an ad for a desktop version a few years ago for "Less than a beemer" at just $72,000.) Even if you could afford one, I think these are a bit of overkill for your child. A good quality microscope with metal frame and glass optics will run from $100 to $500.

Folding Hand Lens For children below the age of 9 years old, a more affordable, rugged and portable alternative would be a hand lens or "magnifying glass." (I had one of these, too, and wore by "Sherlock Holmes" hat when I went investigating.) There are even some hand lenses that have two or three lenses you can combine to vary the magnification.

Hands down, though, my favorite is the Eye Loupe. A loupe (pronounced LOOP) is simple, small, hand-held magnification. Unlike a magnifying glass, a loupe does not have an attached handle, and the lens(es) are contained in a tube or cone. Loupes come in 5x to 20x or more, but the real power comes not from the magnification it gives, but the focus. When you hold it up to your eye, you block out the rest of the world. When a child puts it to their eye, you can see the wonder and concentration begin!

The eye loupe is such a magical tool that there is a company here in Washington State – The Private Eye - based solely on helping teachers use them with children to increase learning. A single eye loupe from them will cost $5 plus $7 in shipping, but it includes an instruction card with great questions to engage your child's mind.

The Real Power

The power of using any these tools isn't that they help you see the various parts of something, but rather that they teach you to look closely, and open the imagination through thinking by analogy, changing scale, and theorizing. The real power of learning comes not from asking "What is it?" but by developing the habit of asking oneself questions such as:

What does it look like?
Why did it remind me of that?
What else does it look like? What does it remind me of in music? In movement? In literature? In feelings? In your family? In this room? In sports?
If it reminds me of ____, then how could it work like that? or function like that? (Or was that designed to work like my original?)
If it reminds me of ___, I wonder if I could design something to work like it.

You don’t need acres and acres of space. Get an eye loupe and the smallest yard will provide weeks of exploration and learning.