Compound Monocular Microscope (Inv. 35972)

Name: Mallainee

Little daphnia under a microscope. Photo credit: Daphnies by Thomas Bresson (license)

Age: 22

From: Toowoomba, Australia

Occupation: Teacher

Object: Microscope

Story: I was using a microscope to examine the heart rate of daphnia when the daphnia released its eggs and gave birth in front of 20 year 12 students. Needless to say they were very excited to reuse the daphnia for their population unit.

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Émile and his microscope.

Name: Émile

Age: 6

From: Oxford, UK

Object: Microscope

Story: When I was at school doing P.E. I felt something crawling on my chin, I smacked it because I thought it was a spider, then I felt a shot of pain. It was a wasp! Then the sting was so painful I screamed. My teacher took me to the staff room, she got some ice that I put on the sting. My teacher pulled the sting out and we put it in a cup and I took it home. Then we put the sting under the microscope at home. It was black and it had red sticky stuff coming out of it. I think it might have been blood.

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Compound Microscope, c. 1853 (Inv. 53440). Despite being over 150 years old, this microscope from the Museum’s collection looks remarkably similar to the one from Robyn’s story – although that one wasn’t so shiny.

Name: Robyn

Age: 22

Occupation: Student

From: Surrey, UK

Object: Microscope

Story: For Christmas one year, when I was about 9, I was given a small microscope for children, and for the first couple of weeks I could not have been more excited. But, once I had looked at my hair, some onion and some (very dull) soil I was convinced I’d run out of things to do with it. This changed when my younger sisters came home from school with nits and I realised that I could place them under the microscope once they had been combed out. I can still remember the fascination and horror we all felt at seeing a living creature through the microscope lens.

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