We live in a beautiful world – and that beauty and complexity extends far beyond what humans can see unaided. From plant and animal anatomy to cells and proteins and even down to the level of ...
Use this interactive to identify and label the main parts of a microscope. Drag and drop the text labels onto the microscope diagram.
Microscopes let us view an invisible world – the objects around us that are too small to be seen with the naked eye. This timeline provides a look at some of the key advances in microscopy. ~710 ...
Every cell in your body contains organelles (structures that have specific functions). Just like organs in the body, each organelle contributes in its own way to helping the cell function well as ...
In this activity, students identify and label the main parts of a microscope and describe their function. By the end of this activity, students should be able to: identify the main parts of a ...
Elements are formed deep within the cores of certain types of star. Find out more in this interactive.
Electron microscopes are very powerful tools for visualising biological samples. They enable scientists to view cells, tissues and small organisms in very great detail. However, these biological ...
Observation is something we often do instinctively. Observation helps us decide whether it’s safe to cross the road and helps to determine if cupcakes are ready to come out of the oven ...
Microscopes enhance our sense of sight – they allow us to look directly at things that are far too small to view with the naked eye. They do this by making things appear bigger (magnifying them) ...
A microscope is something that uses a lens or lenses to make small objects look bigger and to show more detail. This means that a magnifying glass can count as a microscope! It also means that ...
The universe is full of amazing things, but we need help to see most of them. There are many types of light that our eyes cannot see, so we use instruments, such as telescopes, that can detect ...
From the universe itself down to the tiniest subatomic particle, objects in our world exist in a mind-boggling array of sizes. With microscopes, we can look directly at some of the objects and ...
Cells are the building blocks of life – all living organisms are made up of them. Textbooks often show a single ‘typical’ example of a plant cell or an animal cell, but in reality, the shapes of ...
Nanotechnology is possible partly because tools have been developed to ‘see’ particles of matter a nanometre (nm) across, or smaller. That’s less than a billionth of a metre. When the idea of ...
Electron microscopes were developed in the 1930s to enable us to look more closely at objects than is possible with a light microscope. Scientists correctly predicted that a microscope that used ...
Nobel prize winner, Sir Paul Nurse, thinks there are five big ideas in biology. He suggests that cell theory is the first of these. During a 2006 tour of New Zealand, he explained why cells are ...
Since their discovery by Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, microorganisms have been found in almost every environment on earth. Microorganisms are capable of causing disease but are also used to make ...
Explore the features of different microscopes and learn how scientists choose which ones to use in their research.
Since Antonie van Leeuwenhoek first saw mysterious ‘animalcules’ (bacteria) through his simple glass lens in the late 1600s, scientists have wanted to understand more about the strange and ...
Ferns come in a variety of shapes and sizes and this interactive explores the diversity of form in New Zealand ferns. The fern body consists of 3 major parts – the rhizome, the fronds and the ...
The Science Learning Hub has lots of resources for primary teachers related to the night sky in the Planet Earth and Beyond strand of the New Zealand Curriculum. The night sky is fascinating to ...
Allan Mitchell (Microscopy Otago) talks about the meaning of the term ‘resolution’ in microscopy. Using real-world examples, Allan explains that resolution is the ability to distinguish two ...
Specialised microscopes allow us to view an object’s surface and its internal structures to build up 3D images from thin 2D slices and to look much more closely than we ever have before. In this ...
Microbiology started with Dutch scientist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek in 1676. Microbiology is the study of microorganisms and includes the fields of bacteriology, virology and mycology. Van ...
