December 5, 1998

The goal of the Saturday Explorers was to understand microscopes and magnifying glasses. The explorers are given a microscope with a piece of paper attached to it. They look into the microscope and discover that the words that appear in the eyepiece are large and in reverse order opposed to what they saw with their eyes. Next, the explorers move into another room and focus their attention on a cardboard camera. They place a black cloak over themselves and look through the camera.

The explorers learn that light travels in a straight line. Robert Panoff, Bob1, draws an illustration that show why objects seen in the microscope and the camera are upside down. He then demonstrates to them how this is possible.

Next, the explorers come inside to see the power of magnifying glasses. First, they look out of the window and see an image. Next, they turned away from the image and look at a piece of paper on the wall. By holding the magnifying glass near the paper, the light reflects off of the magnifying glass and forms the exact image, upside down.

The focal length, is the distance in which all of the image appear in the same quality no matter the image. Bob1 show the explorers several different places where they could look at the image through their magnifying glass. The explorers amazed at the quality of the images that they saw, try to find others of this quality. Concluding this, the explorers write their reports and learn about the Internet.