We have acquired and made available for loan a durable, easy-to-use, though expensive video-probe microscope. This hand-held, automatically focussing instrument can be used by a 5 year-old and provides instant, excellent, in-focus images of 50X to 200X on a video screen visible simultaneously to all students in the class.

The probe consists of a miniature video camera with interchangeable magnifying “objective” lenses which are surrounded with built-in, cool, fiber-optic illumination. Each lens is capped with a “contact tip” which corresponds to the focal length of the lens and which, when touching the sample, provides automatic focus of the image on the monitor. The images can be videotaped in the normal fashion.