The stereoscopic microscope is to science fair projects what Jell-o is to first time cooks; a foolproof project that will actually do what it is expected to do. Stereoscopic microscopes have been around forever, with their design unaffected by the advent of such 20th century wonders as the electron and digital microscopes.

Compound or Stereoscopic?

No matter how many bells and whistles either of them may have added, there are two basic kinds of microscope: compound and stereoscopic. The difference between them is that a compound microscope allows the user the use of only one eye when viewing a specimen. The stereoscopic microscope, on the other hand, allows the viewer the use of both eyes. What does this mean?

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The art of photography has allowed human beings, for the last one hundred and fifty years, to make a permanent visual record of their surroundings. Photographs are as commonplace now as words, and a world without cameras would not only be unimaginable; it would be unmanageable.

But what about the parts the physical world too small for either the human eye or the camera’s eye to pick up? There is as much, or more, going on beyond our range of vision as there is within it, and many of the things occurring at that at that level have a profound affect on who we experience life. Illness, for instance, always begins at a cellular of microbial level.

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