Adventures with a Microscope

With a simple microscope and this book, you can embark on 59 wonderful adventures in the natural world - make discoveries about the structures of numerous microscopic animals; find out what everyday objects and foods really look like at the cellular level; gain an understanding of how to prepare specimens and slides; and learn about many scientific phenomena such as how a fly can walk upside down on the ceiling. It's all here in simple-to-understand language and 142 clear line drawings.The author first examines under the microscope such everyday objects as a human hair, air bubble, scale of a herring, poppy seed and sugar crystal, and then offers through-the-microscope views of such creatures and objects as the water flea, hydra, house fly, amoeba, euglena, volvox, diatoms, desmids, algae, blood corpuscles, honey bee, rotifer, water-mites, potato starch, and other food substances, lichen, paramecium, coffee, sponge, chalk, yeast, bacteria, mustard, pepper, bryozoan, moss, mushroom, molds, cotton, and other textile fibers, ferns, dragon-flies, flea, spider, roots, and other plant structures, paper, aphid, fingerprints, nervous system of the grasshopper, and more.Richard Headstrom, formerly associated with the New England Museum of Natural History and an experienced teacher and writer on natural science for young people, has made this book simple enough for any beginner at home as well as interesting for more experienced students and lay readers. Enjoyable and instructive, these adventures with a microscope will appeal to all who are curious about what there is to see beyond the range of the naked eye.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Useful Supplies for Your Laboratory Table and Shelf ADVENTURE No. 1 We Examine Some Common Objects 2 We Become Crystal Gazers 3 We Hunt a One-Eyed Monster 4 We Learn the Meaning of Privacy 5 We Follow in the Footsteps of Hercules 6 We Learn How a Fly Walks Upside Down 7 We Seed the Famous Am/ba 8 We Meet with a Puzzle of Natural History 9 We Dig for Bones in an Ancient Graveyard 10 We Make the Acquaintance of the Desmids 11 We Find Beauty in Unexpected Places 12 We Stab Ourself for Love of Science 13 We Go Marketing with a Honey Bee 14 We Learn What It Means to be Stung 15 We Meet with an Optical Illusion 16 We Make the Acquaintance of Eylais 17 We Take a Lesson in Food Analysis 18 We Raid Our Kitchen 19 We Go Bear Hunting 20 We Discover a Zoological Radio Station 21 We Come Upon a Strange Partnership 22 We Meet Some Relatives of the Am/ba 23 We Encounter Some Strange Animals 24 We Learn the Use of Perfume 25 We Test Our Morning Coffee 26 We Learn Something About Sponges 27 We Find Out What Chalk Is Made of 28 We Inquire into the Nature of Yeast 29 We Go Microbe Hunting 30 We Perform a Spicy Experiment 31 We Dig for Worms 32 We Meet Some More Worms 33 We Receive a Pleasant Surprise 34 We Examine a Moss Plant 35 We Make a Study of Toadstools 36 We Become Farmers 37 We View the Most Primitive Insects 38 We Learn to Distinguish Textile Fibers 39 We Trace the Life History of Ferns 40 We Observe the Circulation of Blood 41 We Do a Bit of Surgery 42 We Meet a Champion 43 We Inspect a Spinning Machine 44 We Acquire Insight into the Structure of Roots 45 We Examine an Extraordinary Pipe-Line 46 We Tour Through One of Nature's Factories 47 We Learn That Flowers Are Not Merely Ornamental 48 We Investigate the Structure of Paper 49 We Train Our Lens on Two Familiar Creatures 50 We Behold an Animal That Swims on Its Back 51 We Receive a Lesson in Evolution 52 We Perform a Major Operation 53 We Prove That Appearances Are Sometimes Deceptive 54 We Are Intrigued by a Delightful Relationship 55 We Look at the Sun Animalcule 56 We Approach the Science of Criminal Detection 57 We Solve a Mystery 58 We Observe a Wonderful Provision of Nature 59 "We See What Makes Animals "Go"