Customer Reviews

The Ultimate Guide to Your Microscope

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3 star:		(1)
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This book would be suitable for the youngest microscopists however they will quickly outgrow it and may become bored. While there's some excellent information contained here, the treatment is often a little too general, for example the section on both fresh water and marine protozoa is only four pages including illustrations.

There are some things this book does extremely well however. It presents age appropriate micro techniques for making slides and preparing specimens, something that is not always handled well in texts aimed at this age group.

I have another criticism of this book which is that both the compound microscope and the stereo microscope are used interchangeably, and the young readers are likely to be confused as to which instrument they should be using. Students would need both instruments available to follow all the exercises.

A feature of the book is information panels which expand on the knowledge gained from the lessons. While these are an excellent idea they often contain detail such as SEM images which the child will not be able to see with his instrument. This would be a possible source of confusion and disappointment.

I can recommend this book to adults planning lessons and for young beginning microscopists, but only as a adjunct to more comprehensive texts or instruction.

I bought three of these books for my grandkids. I wanted to introduce them to an exciting hobby. This book turned out to be a good choice, even for teenagers. The paper quality and pictures are very good. It covers a variety of subjects you can study under the microscope. I would even recommend it to adults who are not familiar with microscopes. It is just a pleasant book to browse through and enjoy. I have worked with microscopes for many years and even I enjoy looking through this book.