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100 Years of Microscopy in the palm of your hand
0 Comments | Posted by Mark in Company News
In the late Fall of 1911, a brilliant German physicist named Oskar Heimstadt invented the fluorescence microscope while working in his laboratory in Vienna, Austria.
Fluorescence occurs when matter absorbs light from one wavelength and emits or radiates light at a different wavelength. Mr. Heimstadt was the first scientist to capture these light rays being emitted from live bacteria.
As a result, his pioneering work has paved the way for the rapid advancement and development of DNA detection, immunology, biotechnology and a host of other modern life-science and biological research applications.
In recognition of this 100-year anniversary, Microscope.com, in partnership with BigC.com, has introduced a new microscope which literally brings the power of fluorescence imaging to the palm of your hand.
The new Dino-Lite AM4113T-GFBW features blue LEDs for excitation and a 510nm emission filter which allows observation of green fluorescence protein (GFP) activity in live cells, a critical benefit to the geneticist or bio-engineering researcher.
“It is extraordinary to think that 100 years later, we are able to apply his invention in the palm of our hand at a price of less than $700!” said Charles Crookenden, President of Microscope.com. Indeed, one can only wonder where we’ll be 100 years from now.
Many of you may have have noticed that over the past two weeks, Microscope.com has launched an updated website. We have worked for 2 1/2 years building the new site in order to bring our customers a more engaging web experience. However, the gremlins of software development have caused it to suffer from continuing issues that simply do not live up to the levels of customer service to which we aspire. So much for extensive pre-launch testing. The site is just not good enough and we are heading back to the future.
As a result, after much soul-searching and analysis, we have decided to take down the new site while we figure out what else needs to be done in order to make it as good as we want it for our customers. That means, we shall switch back to the old web design with immediate effect.
We understand that this switch back may confuse some of our customers. We apologize for this confusion and we ask for your patience. It has been an awful, but educational experience for us and we intend to ensure that you continue to receive the high levels of service to wehich you are accustomed.
With that in mind, please do not hesitate to call us toll free on 877-409-3556 and again….our sincere apologies.
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MIcroscope.com wins 3rd consecutive Gold Award
0 Comments | Posted by Charles in Company News
We are delighted to have been awarded Top Ten Reviews’ Gold Award for the Best Online Microscope retailer for the third consecutive year. It is especially nice to receive it in a year when all around is doom and gloom – it cheered up our hard-working staff no end! As always, we all work hard to maintain a high standard of customer service which begins with the website and…….well, if you need us….it never ends as we offer free post sales service.
We have experienced a glitch this year in that our new website has been much delayed and the final result is not up to par. We are, therefore, particularly appreciative of all our customers in supporting us this year.
Microscope.com has had a makeover…………6.00pm EST on Friday, October 14th, we went Live with our new website! If you hear cheers echoing through the site it is because the birthing process took 21/2 years from beginning to end, involved two design firms, countless man hours – and several years off my life. We hope you agree that all that effort is worthwhile as it is a very different website from the old one!
The new site is designed to improve the level of online service we provide. With that in mind, we have three objectives on the new website: we want it to engage you – to make purchasing a microscope a terrific experience. We want it to provide you with a lot of useful information that will help guide you through the purchase process to the ‘right’ microscope for your application. And, finally, we want it to be easy to navigate.
We have designed three ways for you to find your microscope. By type of microscope, By type of application and finally, By brand. These three paths form the primary categories in the main navigation bar at the top of the site. We encourage you to check them out as they include uniquely rich and innovative drop-down menus. Once you enter one of these categories, you will find a range of filters in the left hand column that will quickly narrow down your selection. By the way, anything in the color orange is actionable….simply click on it!
Need help? Every point of our new site includes helpful information….from the product tips in the drop-down menus to the ? mark information pop-ups on the category pages (just click on one), 5 Things You Need to Know at the top of the primary category pages and, of course, a large Education Center. And if none of that helps, our knowledgeable staff are still always available to lend friendly guidance.
Finally, please bear with us in the early days of the new site. It is fiendishly complex and we anticipate some initial bugs will need to be ironed out. Indeed, we welcome your feedback and help in finding them …… just drop us an email (jason@microscope.com), to let us know if you find any problems or simply have ideas for improvements!
We need you …….and we look forward to continuing to be of service.
With school in session around the country, millions of students are back in class learning about the world around them. Today’s technology is transforming the classroom, with inter-active touchscreen tablet PCs and Kindles sprouting up everywhere. A world removed from our grandparents one-room school with a coal-fired stove and rudimentary blackboard.
But a part of that pioneering legacy steadfastly refuses to be replaced. The ever-versatile, old-fashioned piece of chalk still remains as an energy-free, highly-versatile, affordable tool for teachers.
And with good reason. According to our archaeologists, we’ve been using natural chalk as a communications tool since the dawn of history. One look at our ancestors prolific prehistoric cave paintings and hieroglyphics tells the tale of our earliest educators efforts at knowledge transfer.
Coccoliths - Credit UMD Geology Dept.
The fascinating thing is, chalk powder is actually composed of billions of micro-fossils called coccoliths. These are tiny skeletal plates which once covered living cellular organisms called plankton. When the plankton organism dies, the cell degrades, leaving behind the hard calcitic skeletal plates. Coccoliths are very small, even by plankton standards, and are called nano-fossils, shown here with an electron microscope.
Chalk originates from limestone rock deposits which were formed between 100 million and 60 million years ago when global temperatures and sea levels were much higher than today. The chalk deposits formed in sea beds where high numbers of coccolith plates could accumulate as pure sediments, undiluted by mud or sandy soil washed in from the continents. These micro-sediments take on strikingly delicate shapes as seen here.
Calcitics - Credit UMD Geology Dept.
As our inland seas retreated, they left behind layers of sedimentary mud which hardened into rocky chalk strata, filled with micro-fossils and skeletons of marine life. These muddy layers of calcitic sediments eventually become fossilized, preserving a diverse geological history in the process.
Today, chalk has a great many uses in our society, far beyond the classroom. For example, when chalk is heated, it becomes lime, which is used to make steel, aluminum, glass, sugar, cement and fertilizer. Yes, those nano-fossils are still playing an important role, even now, 80 million years later.
So the next time you see your child master a math problem on the chalkboard during parent-day at school, tell them about the tiny little creatures, living eons ago, which made it all possible.
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OptixCam 10 Megapixel Digital Microscope Camera
0 Comments | Posted by Charles in Microscope Cameras, Products
The OptixCam OCS-10.0, ten megapixel, digital microscope camera has arrived and is working well. For the first time, it is Mac compatible although not with the full OC View software. The camera includes a Micron MT9P001 1/2.3 inch sensor with improved performance over its predecessor OCS-9.0. Faster 3 frames/second refresh rate at full resolution and up to 25 fps at 1280 x 1024 pixels.Priced at $499 with the normal free post sales service from Microscope.com makes this an useful addition to the OptixCam line up.
Our world oceans are teeming with absolutely fascinating microscopic life. These mini marine monsters and micro marvels defy description and are among the most intriguing creatures Mother Nature creates.
Take “Jaws Junior” here, for example. This is not an artificial image created in some graphics hack shop using the latest animation wizardry from Pixar® Studios.
Hydrothermal Worm - Photo Credit: Philippe Crassous
It’s a real, live creature called a Hydrothermal Worm. And it’s really, really tiny. So small in fact, that you need a very special type of microscope to even see it. This image comes from an electron microscope which uses beams of electrons instead of light to capture the incredible details which bring these jaws to life.
Taken using an FEI Quanta SEM scanning electron microscope, this image is magnified about 525 times. To give you an idea of the scale, the mouth of Jaws Junior pictured here is about 255um wide, or about ¼ of a millimeter.
And as scary as he looks, you won’t have to worry about bumping into him on your next beach visit. Bobbing away in the dark depths of the ocean floor, hydrothermal worms are deep sea creatures, almost as small as bacterium, and are mainly found near active hydrothermal vents in the ocean’s bottom.
A hydrothermal vent is sort of like an underwater geyser. They form when seawater, super-heated by contact with molten magma, rises up through cracks in the ocean’s crust to shoot above the colder, dense surrounding ocean water.
These vents are in a very tough environment, with sea water pressures 300 times greater than your swimming pool and temperatures as high as 500 degrees Fahrenheit. Which means our friend Jaws Junior and the millions of organisms like him, have definitely earned our respect, and their place in the microscopic world.
What do Harry Potter, Justin Bieber and the Energizer Bunny all have in common? Ironically, they all owe their popularity to a man who lost most most of his hearing as a child and who’s teacher once labeled him with an “addled brain”.
At the young age of 30, Thomas Alva Edison created history’s first recorded human voice when he uttered the words “Mary had a little lamb..” into his newly invented phonograph…
Edison Phonograph - Image Credit: National Parks Service
Edison went on to patent his invention and used it to create the world’s first commercially available talking doll, complete with an audio of a woman’s voice. He recorded her speaking “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” by turning the vibrations of her voice into etchings in a metal cylinder.
The original cylinder, however, became badly damaged and the recordings were believed lost to the ages.
Now, thanks to the magic of microscopy, those first moments of recorded voice history can be heard again. Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, using a confocal microscope, were able to scan the original, very damaged metal cylinder.
Record Surface - Image Credit: Berkeley National Lab
The microscope created a fascinating, 3D map of the recording’s grooves, which looked like a 3-dimensional map of a series of long, continuous, microscopic mountain valleys. When they ran the map through their audio software they heard, through the scratches and skips..”Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”
Historians using newspaper archives were able to date the recording back to 1888, near the beginning of Edison’s prolific inventing career. He would eventually hold patents on 1,093 inventions, including motion picture cameras, parallel circuits, alkaline batteries, electrical generators and of course, the incandescent light bulb.
All because an ambitious young man had an insatiable curiosity. Now if we could just find a way to bring back Elvis.
Mother Nature has a secret and she’s hiding it right between your toes. From individual grains in your backyard, to miles of sandy beaches or towering dessert dunes, sand is everywhere, and an integral part of our lives. Buildings, windows, toothpaste, paper, even computers all owe their origins to the tiny grains of sand squishing under your feet.
Yet the most interesting secrets remain hidden until they are revealed by a microscope. Because when you take a closer look, much closer, the picture becomes fascinating.
Under magnification a tiny piece of rock now becomes a sparkling gem and a bit of coral turns into a glittering jewel.
And the best way to take your own journey of discovery is with a stereo microscope, ideally one with at least 40x magnification (the Omano OM24L, for example). For really cool results, try shining a light across the sample from the side. You’ll bring out shadow and surface details which seem to magically appear.
What’s really neat is knowing that you’re looking at a piece of rock or mineral which is many thousands or even millions of years old.
And if your sand is from an ocean beach, it very possibly could have come from a distant land or ocean depths, thousands of miles away.
Most of us think of sand as light tan or white. But once you start your microscopic journey, you’ll discover black, gold, green…every color of the rainbow. For example…
Pink and Orange – are commonly called garnets
White or clear – usually associated with quartz
Black or deep Red – iron minerals like magnetite and hematite
Dark Green – commonly called diopside
Bluish – most likely a zircon
The only downside to viewing sand with a microscope comes in part, because it is a very small, natural abrasive. It can easily find it’s way into nooks, crannys and delicate mechanisms.
So handle it with care, placing a small sample in the center of your viewing stage. After viewing, use a damp cloth and very light, gentle motions to wipe away any residual sand from around the stage and microscope base.
Your work will be rewarded by a unique look into one of Mother Nature’s oldest secrets. Just add a dash of imagination and memorable moments are yours for the making. Those are the real treasures, and they’re priceless!
The barbecue and picnic season is officially here, and to kids (of all ages), the hot,
humid weather means only one thing…lots and lots of ICE CREAM! After all, what better
way to top off your Independence Day apple pie than with a scoop of Grandma’s old
fashioned homemade vanilla ice cream?
No matter what’s on your summertime desert menu, ice cream is always a central part of
hot weather festivities. But your next picnic might quickly take a turn for the worse if proper precaution isn’t a regular ingredient in your homemade ice cream sundae or milkshake. Because nobody wants to see this uninvited guest make a memorable appearance at their next ice cream social…
E. Coli Bacteria Animation
Food-borne dairy-based illnesses tend to spike during the summer, mainly from unpasteurized dairy products spending too much time outside the refrigerator. Bacteria like E coli grow much faster when its warmer than 45 degrees.
If your homemade ice cream recipe calls for raw eggs, milk or cream, consider modifying the recipe. Those ingredients can be replaced with pasteurized eggs and milk products which yield a safe yet delicious alternative. Whole liquid pasteurized eggs are another alternative, available at most supermarkets. They come packaged in small cartons and can be used just like fresh, whole eggs.
Now comes the best step in the process – eating! Homemade ice cream will stay fresh for about 5-7 days. then it starts to lose its creamy texture and appeal. So don’t let your efforts go to waste. Enjoy, then follow safe guidelines for your next batch of ice cream and you won’t have to worry about monsters in your next milkshake.
It’s no surprise to anyone that the amount of advertising bombarding our eyeballs has exploded. Some studies suggest we see between 250-300 impressions a day, though less than half of them register in our minds. With the ever-expanding clutter of ads fighting for our attention, marketers are getting creative, very creative. Ads have found their way onto gas pumps, buses, elevators, and even the most sacred space of all, the restroom stall.
And so it’s not surprising that a leading manufacturer of razor blades has come up with a unique way to stand out from the crowd. With the help of the University of Nottingham in England, they’ve somehow managed to place an ad – get this – on a single strand of hair!
According to sources at the University, one of their professors, Dr. Christ Parmenter, used an electron microscope to carve an ad on a human beard hair donated for the occasion.
The effort was in support of an ad campaign by razor maker Gillette to promote their latest creation, the ProGlide. From Gizmodo, the entire ad is only 100 microns long, and the letters were a mere 3 microns high.
Just how small is 3 microns? Well for starters, a period – . – is 64 microns across, give or take. It’d be like placing a pencil on the 50-yard line of a football field, then trying to read the printing on it from the cheapest seats in the house.
So no matter how you slice it, Dr. Parmenter and crew pulled off a stunning achievement in microscopy and our hat’s off to them. There’s even an initiative to register the achievement with the Guinness World Records.
And just what did Gillette do with the ad nobody could see? According to Adweek the pictures were blown up to poster size for human eyes. And I imagine those posters wound up on gas pumps, buses, elevators, and yes, even the most sacred space of all.
Sometimes you never know what you’ll learn when visiting the unseen world within your microscope. The closer you look, the more interesting our natural world becomes, as George Sabo, one of our customers, recently discovered with his Omano OM3344 stereo microscope. While out and about on his property in Arizona, he came across a colorful little beetle which led to this amazing story, relayed by email…
Arizona Blister Beetle - Photo Credit George Sabo
“When I ran down a hill and captured this beetle, he sprayed orange juice on my fingers – luckily I had bottled water along and washed it right off – otherwise I would have had a problem.”
As George almost discovered first-hand, these beetles are also known as blister beetles, for the blisters their secretions can raise on living tissue.
Blisters can be painful, but that’s not all our colorful little friend can produce. According to Margarethe Brummermann, an Arizona biologist, blister beetles are poisonous. Some species such as the Striped Blister Beetle can cause health problems in livestock. They’ve been known to cause digestive damage, internal bleeding and, in rare cases, even death to grazing animals like horses who feed on hay containing the beetles.”
Striped Bristle Beetle - Credit Charles S. Lewallen
Besides the colorful and potent beetles, George goes on to describe a common theme among budding microscopists, the enchantment of learning something new…”I found a fascinating book on the diversity of life on our earth, and it made me look at things in a new way, and this led me to buy the Omano stereo zoom microscope from you people which has literally opened up a new world to me.”
“The clear, three dimensional images this instrument can produce are truly amazing! I am just getting started collecting specimens from both the desert environment where we winter and our summer home area in Northwest Washington, and I know it will be a real adventure seeing these with my outstanding new microscope!”
George, we couldn’t have said it better ourselves. Thanks for sharing and showcasing yet another window into the wonders of nature hiding before our eyes.
Photo Credit : BigC.com
Great news from Dino-Lite! After facing cheap, knock-offs priced under $100, Dino-Lite have lowered the price on their AM2011 USB digital microscope to $99 and to $149 for the AM3011. We had discussed this idea with them a few weeks ago since, up until now, they have not had a microscope priced under $100. As a result, they have been missing out on some Consumer sales.
It is a good move because, the AM2011 is plain better than the copycats; higher quality industrial design and construction, more robust software and most important, better optics and resolution. Moreover, Mac users will be pleased to hear that it is both PC and Mac compatible for later versions, which is hard to find in competing products.
The AM2011 offers 10-200x variable magnification, 640×480 pixel resolution, USB 2.0 output and 4 White LED lights integrated in the nosecone. The main difference to the AM3011 is that the latter has 8 white LEDs that are controllable in the software. The AM3011T also offers a touch trigger mechanism to capture images without using the keyboard.
Most developing nations have a very pressing need for modern microscopes, supplies and equipment. Nowhere is this more true than in Haiti, one of the most impoverished countries in the Carribean region.
As we are all well-aware, the earthquake of January, 2010 caused large-scale damage to hospitals and clinics already suffering from severe shortages of medical supplies. These factors and more have combined to raise infant and maternal mortality rates to among the highest in the Western hemisphere.
One organization answering the call for international assistance is Mother Health International, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping pregnant mothers and children in areas of disaster and extreme poverty. MHI’s mission is to provide a clean, holistic birthing environment along with education and training of caring volunteers and midwives.
So when Heather Maurer, one of MHI’s founders, told us the story of her work and their urgent need for medical equipment, we felt compelled to act. As an e-commerce business, it isn’t every day that you get to make such a direct, positive impact on another person’s life. That’s why one of our Omano OM88 clinical compound microscopes and microscopy supplies are on their way to Haiti. And we are grateful for the opportunity to be of service.
100% of Mother Health International staff are volunteers and all funds raised directly support the women’s clinic in Jacmel, Haiti. To learn how you can make a difference, please visit www.motherhealthinternational.org.
Once again, we’re just ahead of Memorial Day and the official start of summer. It also means many of us will be riding in planes, trains, or automobiles this weekend, heading off to holiday travel adventures.
In preparation for an upcoming road trip, I stopped by our dealership last week to see if they could fit our vehicle in for an oil change and tire rotation. The service adviser must have been having a bad day, as he dismissed my request with a harried wave of his hand, barely glancing up from his computer. “We’re full,” was all he said. And then he was on to more important things. And I was out the door.
I don’t often run into that kind of behavior, especially in today’s challenging economic environment. And yet it always amazes me to see this happen, because nothing has greater long-term negative impact on a business than a bad customer experience. And the same holds true for an exceptionally good experience. Like the email we got the other day from Lee in Phoenix, AZ. He writes…
”Dear Mr. Crookenden, I am writing to thank you for the excellent service that I recently received from two of your employees.” (His microscope was damaged in shipping.)
“I called and talked to Dave in your repair department. Dave said he would send me a new one and a pre-paid return label for the damaged one. He told me the replacement would be sent UPS ground and that it was so late in the day that it probably wouldn’t go out until the next day.”
“Later that evening I was quite surprised to receive an email tracking number, and to find the replacement had been upgraded to 2nd-day air. It arrived in fine shape on Friday, May 6. The help I received from Rhonda and Dave has been outstanding. I am an extremely happy customer because of them.”
We like it when that happens. Because it validates something we pride ourselves on. Call it our secret weapon – an exceptional customer service experience.
And as you head off for the Memorial Holiday weekend, we hope your travels are safe, exciting and filled with rewarding experiences as well.
The Microscope.com Team
