In another plant we have that grows in water, there was a more pronounced clump of algae, so we decided to try that.

Forget it, you can't see the germ.  It was basically transparent and the only way to see it was when it moved.  Its motion reminded me of a germ I read about when I was a kid called a “stentor“.

A stentor looks kind of like a trumpet.  It scrunches up into a little ball and then stretches back out again, over and over.  I don't know if this was a stentor, it could have been some sort of microscopic worm like thing, slithering about.

Here's Lynnea demonstrating how we use the scope.  The lamp on the scope is broken, so we needed to use the mirror and a flashlight to illuminate our specimens.

The leaf next to Lynnea's hand came from her Valentine's Day Bouquet.

She's currently looking at a piece of it.

Lynnea and I found that the artificial fibers from Tina's dog bed were much thinner and more uniform than human hair.

But the cobweb strands were wayyyyyyyy thinner.

This image of algae reminded me of green pine needles and pine cones.  I have no idea what those pine-coney things are.  Dirt maybe?

This venus flytrap has to sit in a cup of water so that the soil is always wet.  A little grunge and a tiny blob of algae had formed at the bottom of the cup.  We decided to check that out… maybe we would see germs!

(After we got samples, Pat changed the water.)

The trailing edge of the wing had these weird grooves in it.

The bee wing was really interesting.  I was surprised to discover that it was covered with tiny hairs.  I figured the bee's body and legs might be hairy, but I never counted on it's wing having hairs.

The scope is screwed into the box to hold it in place.  There are two eyepieces (10x and 20x), and four objective lenses (8x, 10x, 40x, and 60x).  There are several extra slides and coversheets, a hand magnifier and various other tools.

And of course, silica gel.  Mmmm.