Bugscope!

Students in Mrs. Garcia's C3 took on a special challenge: to construct our own simple micro-scopes to deepen our watershed study of Dalwigk Park. The result was a great new tool for C3 scientists, a lot of learning, and a lot of fun!
First we built the wooden stand for the scope. This involved measuring the wood, cutting it with a saw, sanding each piece and glueing it together.
Then we built steel arms for the scope. One arm would serve as a table for our specimin slide. On the other we would mount the lens. All this meant measuring, cutting, smoothing, and dimpleing the steel so that then Ms. Moore could drill three holes into it. We then screwed the steel arms onto our wooden frame.
Finishing the project was the best part: we fastened the lens to our steel arm, and immediately we could start looking at things, magnified 40 times. Wow!
That afternoon we walked to Dalwigk Park, where we have been many times before, but now with our BUGSCOPES in our backpacks. What amazing things we were now able to see!

For More Photos on our Bugscope Experience:
Making the Wooden Parts Mounting the Lens
Making the Steel Parts Going to Dalwigk Park with our new Bugscopes!

Special Thanks To All the People
who helped make this possible:

Marin Headlands Institute and George Raddue for introducing Ms. Moore to this fabulous project and helping us get lenses.

Joe Green for taking time away from work for two days to teach kids carpentry skills.

Parent and Family of C3 students who came in to help.

Philanthropic Ventures Foundations who provided a science resource grant to purchase tools and materials to make the scopes.