Natural Science Forum / Biology / Microbiology / February 2005

Talk to the microbiology faculty at your school and work out an
Independent Investigations/Problems deal with one of them, and then use
the departmental microscopes for your work.  You will save yourself a
bunch of cash that could be put to better use and will still be able to
do what you want with a good microscope.  If you look, I think you will
find that your school offers classes for credit that involve the
enterprising student in research; all you need to do is find a faculty
member who will agree to direct the investigations you want to do.

This is not an attempt to talk you out of getting a microscope if you
really want one.  If you can find a medical school student who has moved
beyond the classes where they need a microscope, you may be able to find
a good used scope for the amount you suggest.  Other used binocular
compound scopes are likely to have been hard used for a number of years
(in a school or a working lab) and may not really be usable any more.  
Realistically, a working microbiologist is unlikely to have to provide
their own microscope and may not even use a microscope all that often.

Do you really think that there's only men on this group?

We bought one from Olympus to try out for teaching. It's OK if you only want
to show eukaryotic cells but isn't much use for bacteria, unless stained.
The ability to make short movies was nice, but the depth of field is tiny
and living protozoa rapidly moved out of focus. However, my main complaint
was that the thing had no proper stage to move slides around - just a flat
surface you had to move around - not practical for following something
across the field of view. I also tried to use it to look at 75 year old
slides from the Archive I care for, but the lack of a proper stage limited
it's use then as well.
It was very popular with the public during our last open day as we could
show Paramecium, Amoeba and similar without too much effort. but I don't see
much use for it for research.
Lesley Robertson
http://www.beijerinck.bt.tudelft.nl