National Optical 40X-1000X Compound Microscope

 I couldn't really think of a better title and since that's exactly what this post is going to be about, I just decided to go with it. I was browsing videos on TikTok weekend before last when I stumbled upon a random video of single-celled organisms (or unicelled organisms). It wasn't anything crazy, just some really awesome videos of the micro-creatures. One of the top comments was someone asking what the best microscope was and the OP replied with, "Any good compound microscope". After that, my search began. 

Microbiology is something I've always been fascinated with. I still remember back in the early 90s when I was like 4 years old. I was staying with my grandma when her house was behind her daughter, my aunt Eva. Well my aunt's son was in town for a week or so on leave from the Army and he brought a lot of his belongings from his house. He told us kids to pick something out that we wanted out of his overly packed car. Well there in the backseat sat a microscope and that's what I had my heart set on. Since I was the youngest of the kids I was the last to get to pick something out, so naturally one of the older kids snatched the microscope and I never got to even touch it. 

I've only ever used microscopes in school and we really only ever got to use premade slides. And it was school - which I always hated - so I never really got to enjoy myself. I really feel like I've overshared, my apologizes. Long story short, I researched (cheap) microscopes on Amazon for a couple days and ended up finding an awesome review and unboxing of one on YouTube and that's the one I went with. 

It arrived in the mail today and I went nuts! I kid you not, after all the animals were fed and things were done for the day, I started messing around with it and didn't stop for hours. Max has a kiddie pool outside with water in it, so that's where I got my first sample. It was amazing! I saw so, so many little single-celled organisms... it was just amazing. I also tested out sink water and filtered water from the fridge to see if there were any little creepers - thank god there wasn't any. 

I have a few videos on my phone that I'm going to try and upload. Since I didn't have a specific attachment for my phone, the videos are a little wonky, but I did eventually figure it out. 

This is the tiny amount of water that I used.

This is how it came packaged. It was actually very nice.

Here's the video: