The print-on-demand ink and paper book from Amazon (see right), now
available in Australia as well.It's not in colour, which keeps the price down.
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Looking at Small Things |
Is there such a thing as microscope fu? If there is, it is strong in me...
This is amusement in the garden for people trapped at home with a curious mind.
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Hand lens and microscopy activities for joy, but handy for sanity
during the current school closures!
This is available as an e-book, as a free lo-res PDF version and now as a black and half-tone print version. Because it's black and white, get the e-book!
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Free version from my website with lo-res
graphics and a single whiny message asking you to buy the nice one. This freeby is completely shareable at no charge.
Page 2 will eventually have
an explicit Creative Commons copyright statement, allowing teachers to use it for non-commercial purposes with attribution.
The print-on-demand ink and paper book from Amazon (see right), now
available in Australia as well.
It's not in colour, which keeps the price down.
Twenty years on, I was a science teacher who ran an open lab, where students could come in before school, or at recess and lunch, to use the microscopes. They learned from me, and I learned from them. This book is the result of that learning.
More recently, I did a pro bono job for a South Australian start-up that was making clip-on microscopes that work with phones and tablets. This resulted in a large PDF file called Going Micro, which you can get for free here.
I retained the copyright because I knew there was nothing on the market like this, and I wanted to leave a lasting legacy that would not fade away when some nasty weasel bean counter in a publishing house decided to pull the plug.
I talked to a publisher for nine months, about this and another book, Playwiths, but they have continually dragged the chain, and in the end, I withdrew my offer to them. This is because, with schools and such in COVID-19 shutdowns, there are lots of bright students and involuntary home-schooling parents who need this right now.
I have no time and no patience with the inactive. I served notice of severance to them on 19 March, and on 26 March, Playwiths was up and running. Now, on 14 April 2020, Looking at Small Things is complete.
Publishers take note: in crisis times, THAT's how fast you should work!
I write blogs, books, magazine articles and occasional radio essays, usually writes about science, or history or both. My hobbies include having temporary obsessions, many of which end up becoming topics to write about; bushwalking swiftly, pausing only to bother plants, insects, venomous animals and other wild things; rocks and volcanoes; science and technology as they existed in the 19th century; chatting to telephone scammers in Latin; reading; creative computing; recreational mathematics; being a grandfather—and writing.
While I write mainly for the general (i.e., adult) market, most of my awards have come from a far more challenging area: writing for children. In the past 20 years, seven of my books have been named as Notable by the CBCA. Once a bureaucrat, I hold all the papers needed to prove I'm retired, but I refuse to stop. For the past ten years, my main publisher has been the National Library of Australia. (For foreigners, that's basically Australia's version of the Library of Congress.)
My main 2019 book for the NLA was Australian Backyard Earth Scientist, or see the author's take here, my 2020 books so far are Survivor Kids or see this link for the author's side, and with Amazon, Mistaken for Granite: Earth Science for Rock Watchers.
Not only but also: a rollicking history of quack medicine.
Do you get the sense that I never get bored?
But wait, there's more... naah, don't go there: they're mainly out of print.
That left me more than a bit unsatisfied, because from 1970 ownards, when I had a science lab, I ran it as an
open centre where students could come and use the microscopes. I showed them how to work, I gave them ideas on
what to do, and I learned when they found things I had never seen before.
So having done the Go Micro guide, I thought back 60+ years to when I was given a Bakelite microscope by my scientifically ignorant parents. They could give me no support by way of suggestions about what to look at, or where to find it. This wasn't their fault: they were just clueless, but I don't have that excuse.
They even told me to use a magnifying glass the way Sherlock Holmes did, not the way I do now, and I knew young would-be scientists needed help on things like that. I also knew that I had the necessary knowledge
They need tricks of the trade to catch things.
That means making small pit traps to be left in the garden to catch micro-arthropods.
It means using umbrellas and drop sheets to find hidden invertebrates.
One way and another, there are lots of tricks to use.
Now for the rest, go read the book. If you can't find it, demand it! Trample on a publisher, shout at them: I'm open to offers for a print version, provided it's full colour.
