Microscopes

This week for science we learnt about microscopes. The first thing we did was go to the park to collect some plant and animal samples. It was a fun experience because we got to go out and collect things we found interesting. I didn't collect any living specimens because they would always run away. I decided just to grab some plant samples like grass and leaves to inspect. After that we couldn't use live specimens so we had to use methanol to kill them quickly.

On Thursday we decided to see our specimens under two different microscopes. One was called the dissection microscope. This meant that we could see the "living animals" but it didn't need light to be able to be seen. The other one is called the monocular microscope. this is used for plants like leaves and onions peels but you need sunlight to be able to see it. For the plants, we had to create a slide. A slide is two pieces of thin glass squishing a specimen with iodine to make it easier to see. I looked at a onion peel slice, and a Japanese red sponge. They looked really cool underneath the microscope because you can see it even closer and can also see the cells, here are some photos of them both.