Carl Zeiss holds a live-microscopy workshop for English schoolchildren

Hertfordshire, England--A live-microscopy workshop organized by Carl Zeiss, and centered around one of its stereo microscopes, enabled children at Longworth Primary School in Oxfordshire to experience the excitement of seeing ordinary objects in extraordinary detail.

The event, which allowed the children to capture images for later use, was part of the school’s Summer Fete. A Zeiss Stemi 2000 C stereo microscope, along with an educational version of the AxioCam ERc5s digital camera, was set up in one of the classrooms. Images were viewed live on a large computer screen using the DVI-out function, or stored using the microscope’s “save to SD card” function.

The workshop was the brainchild of Oliver Clarke, a business manager at Zeiss.

“The children were fascinated by the microscope and spent a lot of time finding things to look at and then looking at them using the microscope,” says Longworth’s head teacher, Janice Peacock. “The simplicity of operation meant that they were soon viewing and saving their own images quite independently. As well as being keen to learn more about their objects, they pressed Oliver to explain the workings of the microscope itself and the workshop has sparked a renewed enthusiasm for scientific discovery in the classroom. We are hoping to incorporate some microscopy in the science curriculum this year and look forward to welcoming Oliver to the school again.”