New microscope who dis

I'm thinking of getting a microscope, getting one for my new lab in Boston it's going to be so good gonna be looking at the small floaties in kombucha kimchi rice wine so much more. Maybe even do a little bit bio engineering etcetera. Told N about the idea he made fun of me said he wanted a microscope too if I bought it I said sure why not I'll get you an entry-level usb microscope and we can look at all manner of things you'll understand the importance of a microscope then. Sure he said sent me a link to an amazon microscope I got it for him.

That was two days ago. The microscope arrived by mail this evening.

We spend good two hours unpacking it setting it up and looking at whatever everything we could. The first fifteen minutes sucked a little we looked at some boring thing and then something else. We were both...a little underwhelmed because there was nothing else to do we'd seen everything in our vicinity couldn't think of anything better! That was two beans of coffee and a sheet of paper. Then I looked up an old video of a microscope guy from youtube and all the possibilities opened up! We looked at all the screens, now we can identify the different kids of technologies the different screens use. Then we looked at all the fabrics we were wearing and now we can distinguish between the different kinds of fabrics, and judge the quality of the fabric, kinda' but also quite by looking at them through this toy that barely cost twenty bucks. And the possibilities opened up.

It's unclear if I'll really get a microscope in Boston. I don't need it really there's not much to be gained by seeing the faces --aahahahha-- of the wee little floaties floating around. Like the microscopy guy says on youtube, biology has become a lot more about biochemical interactions and analysis than direct observation. Direct observation is cool to have on screen and draw but the real action comes when you do something with them. Such as put them in the right kinda' environments so they produce the desired chemical pathway, or analyse their composition by bombarding them with radiation or different chemical reagents. Analysis over direct optical observation. That's where the world is going to.

That makes sense. That's where the growth is, where big science is going.

Science is not just about progress. It's also about excitement about outreach and passion. And if using a microscope is going to make me want to do more of something, it's irrelevant if I see something cool in my slides or not. The fact that I'm doing something and enjoying it, and it's inspiring me to follow on my passions is a reason enough to spend a few hundred buckos on a decent microscope.

I probably won't get a microscope though.