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Rooms XII and XIII Teaching and Popularizing Science > Optical Instruments
Museo Galileo
Florence, Tuscany, Italy
Until the early 19th century lenses, mirrors and prisms had been used to demonstrate the optical phenomena of reflection, refraction and dispersion of light. Over the course of the century, the microscope gradually became one of the instruments most widely used in teaching.
The Common Bed Bug.
Bed bugs are small, elusive, and parasitic insects. They live strictly by feeding on the blood of humans and other warm-blooded animals. Bedbugs, though not strictly nocturnal, are mainly active at night and are capable of feeding unnoticed on their hosts, so check your sheets :-)
Sextants get their name from their scale of a sixth of a circle and were invented in the 18th century. Apprentice sailors still learn to use modern sextants in case electronic navigation systems fail. This sextant is a double frame sextant. The scale is made of platinum as this metal does not tarnish and was only used on top quality instruments. Edward Troughton, London c1820.
Damalinia equi also known as the horse biting louse and as an Ischnoceran Louse. The louse is the common name for members of over 3,000 species of wingless insects, three of which are classified as human disease agents. They are a pest of every avian and mammalian order except for monotremes (the platypus and echidnas), bats, whales, dolphins, porpoises and pangolins. Most lice are scavengers, feeding on skin and other debris found on the host's body, but some species feed on sebaceous secretions and blood.
I pricked my finger and this is what came out. I suppose pricking ones finger is better than fingering ones pr...... :-)
Old theodolites and Clinometers found at work. This is a Hilger Watts ST2 Vernier Theodolite.
A theodolite is a precision instrument for measuring angles in the horizontal and vertical planes. Theodolites are mainly used for surveying applications, and have been adapted for specialized purposes in fields like metrology and rocket launch technology. A modern theodolite consists of a movable telescope mounted within two perpendicular axes—the horizontal or trunnion axis, and the vertical axis. When the telescope is pointed at a target object, the angle of each of these axes can be measured with great precision, typically to seconds of arc.
Foraminifera. The shells are made of calcium carbonate (CaCO3) or agglutinated sediment particles. About 275,000 species are recognized, both living and fossil. They are usually less than 1 mm in size, but some are much larger, and the largest recorded specimen reached 19 cm.
Transit Theodolite. 1806. This theodolite was made by the firm Edward Troughton (laterTroughton & Simms), and is one of the leading makers of scientific instruments in trhe early 19th century. This example has an inscription recording its presentation in 1806 to John Playfair, Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh.
Starfish eggs dividing. Not part of any experiment, we keep some small starfish to show school kids and one of them decided to lay eggs and have "babies"; the starfish laid the eggs, not the kids :-)
Turned out okay for a phone camera.
Zooplankton. Carcinus is a genus of crab.
In other words, these are baby crabs of some species. Aint they cute :-)