Skip to content
Ellis Abel Learns.

In my own words · Des Moines, IA

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 — read by families in Des Moines, IA.
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.

You can love microscopes in Des Moines.

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 — read by families in Des Moines, IA.
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

The Des Moines–West Des Moines, IA metro area has about 758,539 residents, ranking 82nd in the country. Interest comes first and skill comes second, in that order, always. This page is for the first part.

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

If the kid who loves this is a girl

Read what one popular teacher said to one little girl who took out the classroom trash without being asked — and what that girl did with the rest of her life.

Girls are great at math — Des Moines, IA →

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 — read by families in Des Moines, IA.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 — read by families in Des Moines, IA.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 — read by families in Des Moines, IA.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 — read by families in Des Moines, IA.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 — read by families in Des Moines, IA.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 — read by families in Des Moines, IA.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 — read by families in Des Moines, IA.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 — read by families in Des Moines, IA.Why I love fossils

Near Des Moines

Why I love microscopes, everywhere in the US · All things to love · STEM jobs you could do · Summer camps in Des Moines