Intro

I had found myself with a balance of £5 in my Amazon account, and with no intended purchases foreseen decided to have a little browse to see if anything interesting could be had for my fiver. Coincidently previously I had been trying to read the writing on something, but it was way too small print for my old eyes. So when I pondered upon this knacky little thing I thought what the heck it's only a fiver.


National Museum Pocket Microscope

My first impression on opening the arrived package was that it was smaller than I had envisaged. With peacock plumage emblazoned all over the box it look very blue and green. A small white area had a picture f the contents, which made it more appealing...............it did look rather nifty.

On removing the pocket scope from the box I discovered two specimen slides, which can be used to place intended objects for viewing, particularly handy for liquids. The fact there were two meant that you could place something between and hold it firmly so as to be able to focus properly, not that I have found focusing a problem in normal circumstances. The eyepiece contains the focusing wheel, which is quite stiff, but I find that a big plus since some such wheels are just too free to enable getting a good setting.
A few inches below this wheel is a lever, which moves the lens to determine how much magnification you wish to achieve. The magnification is it the range of 0 to about 40X. I say about forty since the size of the object being magnified can limit the amount of focus thus reducing the magnification since both are related. It doesn't take very long to figure out the best settings and there is no real need for the slides unless you are using liquid.

For small solid objects such as dust, hair, nail clippings there is a small chamber beneath the lens where you can place objects, this area has a slightly mirrored surface which helps reflect the light from the small LED light provided. This light is very useful and makes the object very much more clear once focused. The unit is plastic and predominantly silver in colour with the structural supports being of quite hard black plastic. It's really quite a sturdy piece of kit for a fiver.


Summary

Once you get the hang of the lens and focus relationship you can get some really surprising results as with the nail clippings I mentioned before. They were quite eerie and non-worldly under the tiny scope. I think this would be great for kinds to experiment and find out what things look like very close up. I was fascinated by some of the stuff I placed under its reasonably powerful little lens. Worth a fiver no doubt.