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Ellis Abel Learns.

In my own words

Why I love microscopes

A Keyence optical microscope set up on a laboratory bench with its monitor and sample stage. Real USGS photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Microscopes" page.
A Keyence optical microscope set up on a laboratory bench with its monitor and sample stage. Renee Pillers, USGS · Public domain
  • There is a whole world I could not see before.
  • Pond water is not empty.
  • My own skin looks like a map.

What it really is

A microscope makes small things big enough for your eye to resolve.

Three things to try today

  1. Look at a leaf, then the same leaf up close.
  2. Look at a drop of pond water.
  3. Draw exactly what you see, not what you expected.
Project scientist Anna Maria Ruby leans over a microscope to view samples in the Microgravity Simulation Support Facility at Kennedy Space Center. Real NASA photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Microscopes" page.
Project scientist Anna Maria Ruby leans over a microscope to view samples in the Microgravity Simulation Support Facility at Kennedy Space Center. NASA · Public domain

For the grown-up reading this

Draw what you see, not what you know. That discipline is the whole of observational science.

Why I love microscopes — 4,299 places across America

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Love something else too

An optical bench in the Laser Optics Laboratory at Ames Research Center, crowded with mirrors, lenses and beam paths. Real NASA photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Lasers" page.Why I love lasersThe last of four gold solar array wings is lowered into place on the Orion spacecraft's European Service Module. Real NASA photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Solar Power" page.Why I love the sunTwo large gantry 3D printers extrude curved concrete walls of subscale habitat structures side by side at NASA's 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge. Real NASA photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love 3D Printing" page.Why I love 3D printersPale rock outcroppings breaking through prairie grass in Big Cypress National Preserve. Real USGS photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Geology" page.Why I love the earthCylindrical rock cores laid out in trays at the USGS Core Research Center, showing bands of different rock layers. Real USGS photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Rocks" page.Why I love rocksThree orange lava fountains jet more than 100 feet above the fissure 8 cone during the 2018 Kilauea eruption. Real USGS photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Volcanoes" page.Why I love volcanoesA jagged crack running across desert ground with a yellow tape measure stretched over it, marking surface rupture from the 2019 Searles Valley earthquake. Real USGS photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Earthquakes" page.Why I love earthquakesHundreds of dinosaur bones still embedded in the tilted rock wall inside the Dinosaur Quarry building at Dinosaur National Monument. Real USGS photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Fossils" page.Why I love fossils

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