The Exploratorium, based in San Francisco, is a “hands on” science museum filled with interactive science and art exhibits, as well as a laboratory for the research and development of innovations in science education. In the summer of 2004, the Exploratorium launched the most ambitious microscope facility ever created for general public use. This initial phase of the project gives visitors the ability to image living specimens, as well as control the instruments themselves. Visitors can select among various specimens, move over them, change the magnification and focus, and, where appropriate, change the lighting to illuminate through the specimen, or use reflected light and fluorescence to dramatically change how it looks. They can image and explore tiny zebrafish embryos from the first stages of development to two-day-old fry with beating hearts and circulating blood cells, as well as a host of other organisms and cells from crawling amoebas to human blood cells.
Below the surface, all living things share common features. The primary goals of this facility are to open a door on the wonder of the microscopic world to a diverse range of museum visitors and allow them to explore it, and to allow them to make connections to science and biomedical research. By empowering visitors with the instruments to explore this unfamiliar universe, the Exploratorium seeks to recreate some of the excitement and wonder that the earliest researchers found as they discovered another world all around them (Box 1).
Box 1. History of Light Microscope The light microscope falls amongst the greatest inventions of human history. Images from it in the 17th century literally revolutionized our understanding of life, providing first-hand evidence of a previously unseen or unsuspected world of organisms and cells all around us. This knowledge profoundly shaped our view of life, and of our placement in the universe. Robert Hooke used a primitive early microscope to see the walls between cells in a piece of cork (essentially discovering the cellular nature of all life), and Anton van Leeuwenhoek's simple scope revealed a previously unknown world of microorganisms living inside his own mouth. Swimming sperm were observed in semen, changing our fundamental understanding of conception. Since that time our world has become populated by marvelously beautiful and intriguing images and movies created by scientists using precise lighting and optics. Most recently, computer-controlled image-capturing techniques and digital technologies capture events and processes too small, slow, or fast for our unaided eyes to see. Van Leeuwenhoek's first microscopes were probably about as powerful as a simple water-drop scope (see Box 2); he used his simple devices to make observations that weren't confirmed for over a hundred years. It's quite possible that early microscope-makers were inspired to make small domed lenses by observing the magnifying properties of a rounded drop of water. Further experimentation with the sizes and shapes of lenses eventually led to much greater magnifications.
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