Hidden Worlds: Looking Through a Scientist's Microscope (Scientists in the Field Series) - Hardcover

Kramer, Stephen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0618055460 ISBN 13: 9780618055463

Publisher: HMH Books for Young Readers, 2001

Synopsis

There are hidden worlds in nature—places you can visit only with a microscope. For more than twenty-five years, Dennis Kunkel has been exploring these worlds. Through the lenses of powerful microscopes, he has examined objects most people have never even thought about: a mosquito’s foot, a crystal of sugar, a grain of pollen, the delicate hairs on a blade of grass. Hidden Worlds takes you behind the scenes of Dennis’s work and explains how he captures his remarkable images of microscopic life and objects. You’ll learn how Dennis became interested in microscopes as a boy, how he prepares specimens for study, and how different kinds of microscopes work. You’ll also have the chance to follow Dennis as he collects in the field—from the ash-covered slopes of Mount St. Helens to the lava tubes, rainforests, and beaches of his home state of Hawaii.

About this title

About the Author:

STEPHEN KRAMER is the author of many science books for young readers, including How to Think Like a Scientist, Lightning, and Eye of the Storm. He teaches at an elementary school near Vancouver, Washington, where he lives with his wife and two sons.

From School Library Journal:

Gr 4-8-An illuminating look at the work of a microscopist. Kunkel works with microscopes to explore science, both on his own and with specialists from related fields. This book contains many of his photos, most taken with electron microscopes. It's fascinating to see the magnified pictures of jellyfish, dust mites, and other creatures, neatly tinted to accentuate body features. Several opening pages, along with the front and back endpapers, are visually dazzling. The heart of the book, though, is what readers learn about how Kunkel produces these images, and to what uses scientists put them. The story of how he worked within the blast zone of Mount St. Helens in 1980 in order to study the effect of volcanic ash on algae is a vivid example of how exciting science can be. The text describes the qualities of several different microscopes, and photographs show the scientist using each tool in his lab. Readers also see samples of the images from each instrument, from the simple view captured with a loupe lens to the neurological details revealed by a transmission electron microscope. Like Kramer's Eye of the Storm (Putnam, 1997), this title offers a wealth of scientific information along with an insightful look at the world of an individual scientist.

Steven Engelfried, Beaverton City Library,

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: HMH Books for Young Readers
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0618055460
• ISBN 13: 9780618055463
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 64