IMPROVING THE MICROSCOPE

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 925, 19 March 1930, Page 14

IMPROVING THE MICROSCOPE

Day by day, while engineers are building bigger things, scientists are looking more into the secrets of tinier ones. Many improvements have been made in the microscope, the instrument with which objects can now be magnified a hundred million times. But as the power of magnification grows the difficulty of getting objects iiito focus increases. Up to now focussing has been done by turning a fine screw. A new advance, simple, but of great importance, was shown at an optical exhibition in London the other day. A little glass tank of mercury was fixed to the stage of the microscope on which the specimen is laid. Although the stage is rigid, made of thick brass, by pouring a few drops of mercury into the glass tank it can be weighed down out of its position by perhaps a millionth of an inch. Tlie tiniest object ever seen in a microscope can be beautifully focussed by changing the weight of the mercury in the glass cell and so bending the object a little farther away. SURE TO FOLLOW Old Sam the carter was often to be seen hitting his horse. “Why is it,” he was asked, “that you always hit your poor old horse on the one side?” “Well,” said Sam, “I reckon that if I get one side going the other is sure to follow.”

SUNSHINE AND MOONSHINE Again it has been a perfect weekend, and I have lived in the sea. All day we swam and sunbathed, and at night, when the moon was full and the sea a breathing mass of silver, we swam again. Even the fish enjoyed the sunny day. There were crowds of tiny things whisking in and out of the rocks. I caught a pretty fellow, not as big as my little finger, and watched him in a ferned pool. He was a very restless person, all blue and silver and with tiny fragile fins. After my glorious daj’, sun-filled, sea-filled, I went down the path in the moonlight where the belladonnas, pink, fragrant and newly awakened, flirted with stray moonbeams and harboured Strange, large-eyed moths. FLYING CLOUD. FROM A LETTER From my half-opened window 1 could catch a glimpse of scenery—tall sunlit trees against a navy-blue sky. Navy-blue and gold and a thousand different shades of green: Surely only Nature would dare to form such a colour scheme and contrive to make it beautiful. Then I sat in the dark and watched the full moon rising—a great orange ball behind feathery, goldedged clouds. It was framed between two tall trees and, watching It, I quite forgot myself until it was sailing triumphantly across the skv. RED STAR. for wise Heads Word Square:— 1— A small sailing boat. 2 Worshipped by Arabs. 3 A girl’s name. 4 A Mohammedan female apartment. 5 A subject or topic. Answer to last week's enigma: Crown. Word diamond: G. Are. Great. Ear.

The Girl Guides at Boksburg, in South Africa, have earned enough money to buy land for a hall of their own, and have £4OO to begin the building with.