Why is my 6 year old so fascinated with "electron microscopes"?!

For well over a year he has been asking me questions about them -- "how big are they, can you see dust mites, will you buy one for me?"

Let's go to the store on the way home from school.
They don't sell them at the store.
When can I have one?
Maybe you will be able to USE one some day, in college. Only grownups doing research use them.
How much are they?
I don't know, maybe $100,000. But you have to know alot about math and science to even use one, I think.
When I'm 10, will you buy me one?
NO. That's enough money for a whole house.

Last night, he asked me to find out how much they cost. I googled and found a picture of used one selling for $35,000.

While I was taking a bath, he found my check book and started writing a check. It says "35,000."

I think this could have been big trouble if he was just a little older, and able to find the address of where to send it.

Kids are so wonderful.

I did run across a website called 'bugscope' that lets school classrooms (K-12) make use of a scanning electron microscope via the Internet -- free of charge. The scope is at the University in Champaign-Urbana.

Electron microscopes are way cool!

We have this.



http://digiblue.com/digital_blue/qx5.html

Best. Toy. Evah! Even the four year old can play with it since it is all plastic. Hardly in electron territory, but a fun toy anyway. The software that comes with it is pretty good. You can do pictures, movies, even time lapse photography.

microscope that hooks up to your computer?

http://digiblue.com/digital_blue/qx5.html


um - obsessions like these usually indicate a pretty intelligent kid. Also, usually, a bit of a "quirky kid", ya know?

Say it a few times. Electron microscope. Electron microscope. Doesn't it sound mysterious and powerful?

I have a PhD that involved building optical microscopes, but I say they're damn cool. Does he need any other reason? I used to run and maintain three electron microscopes years ago.

Now would be a fine time to buy him a play microscope. Intel used to market one that plugged into your PC via a USB port. It was cheap but worked surprisingly well - check ebay.