MicroscopyEducation
Figure 6 : Preschooler mesmerized by an Alice in Wonderland world.
Figure 5 : Student uses a 5× loupe to slide down a fl ower’s throat.
patterns—paying attention with the senses—is the first door to any of these subjects.
T e loupe . So how does a humble 5× jeweler’s loupe open
that door? T e secret of the loupe begins in its design: its fl ared open end, pressed to the bones around the eye, cuts out competing visual stimuli. Take those distractions away and the modest magnifi cation feels extreme. Five times magnifi cation doesn’t sound like much until the student tries it—and bam! He’s sliding down a fl ower’s throat ( Figure 5 ); she’s crawling into a seedpod or coming eye-to-eye with a cricket ( Figure 6 )! But this is only the start. T e ultimate transformation takes something else. Four questions . Learning to really see, it turns out, is not about merely looking closely. If George de Mestral had not closely observed the hooks on cockleburs and the loops on his socks, we would not have Velcro. But he didn’t just observe, and consequently he invented and commercialized a useful product. A particular kind of paying attention is needed, one that is singularly effi cient, one that involves simultaneously making connections: this thing is like that thing. I call it: looking and thinking by analogy. To make this easy, T e Private Eye links the initial surprise in an observation to a question. As simple as it is, this question evokes thinking by analogy and binds the viewer to the subject: “What else does this remind me of? What else does it look like? What else?”
The question acts as a magnifier even as it acts as a connector. It keeps the observer looking, making fresh connections, and noticing underlying patterns—now memorable. All the while, a personal relationship with the blowsy dandelion, the thorny stem, or the worm in the soil is forming.
A wide range of research underscores the importance of connecting the personal and the emotional to the intellectual in order to engage, and hold, attention [ 4 ]. When students
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Figure 7 : The loupe-analogy list provides the “bones” for writing short and long pieces of prose and poetry.
write their answers down (aiming for ten or more), they produce a list of comparisons—analogies—in the form of metaphors and similes ( Figure 7 ). These become the “bones-for-poems” and the scaffolding for stories, essays, and reflections. But they are also an exploration into the characteristics and properties of things. Thus begins the development of comparative, analogical thinking, heightened by asking “ Why did it remind me of that?” How is a spider web like a bridge? How is a dandelion like an umbrella? The third and fourth questions in the process lead to hypothesizing, design, and critique. “Why is it like that?” students ask when considering a phenomenon. They put their analogy lists to work as clues, gaining an understanding of the form-function link in nature by asking themselves the final question: “If it reminds me of ________, I wonder if it might function or work like that in some way?” Alternating between cooperative and independent work, students use their analogies to generate hypotheses that they test, chart results for, and decide on what to investigate further. In biology, for example, a student might use the loupe to examine the surface of a white fuzzy leaf from the plant
www.microscopy-today.com • 2015 May
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