I'm sometimes asked to recommend a microscope for a smart child or adult - i.e. something better than a toy, but not professional. The cheapest microscopes, intended for children, tend to be barely adequate. They are usually plastic, including the lenses, and the images are poor. As with telescopes - and most things in life - price is generally an indicator of quality. The optical microscope, often referred to as the "light microscope", is a type of microscope which uses visible light and a system of lenses to magnify images of small samples. 

There's a couple of major differences between telescopes designed for terrestrial and astronomical viewing. The first concerns how they are mounted on their tripod. 'Regular' (i.e. terrestrial) telescopes can be swivelled horizontally, or vertically - just like a camera on a tripod. This is called an altazimuth mount, or AZ for short. But astronomical telescopes generally use what is called an equatorial mount, or EQ, which has the vertical axis tilted over 23.5 degrees so its parallel with the Earth's axis of rotation. This makes it easier to track stars as they move across the sky, and you can find an object of interest by setting its coordinates (RA & Dec) on the axes' scales.

Theoretical physicist, born in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, UK. He studied at Oxford, then spent his career in Cambridge, holding a chair there from 1977. His work has been concerned with cosmology in a variety of aspects, dealing with black holes, singularities, and the big bang theory of the origin of the universe. His popular writing is also notable, especially A Brief History of Time (1988). The achievement is all the more noteworthy because since the 1960s he has suffered from a neuromotor disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, causing extreme physical disability; he communicates with the aid of a computer. He was made a Companion of Honour in 1989.

Atom Buy this Art Print at AllPosters.com

One of the main quests of science throughout the ages has been to discover what matter is made of - and what holds it together. All matter is made out of many tiny particles called atoms. The study of how these atoms interact is called chemistry. Modern physics has discovered how atoms are made up of smaller particles and how these particles interact to build atoms into molecules and larger objects of matter.

Giant Solar System Mobile Buy at CuriousMinds.co.uk

The solar system consists of the Sun; the eight planets, 165 satellites of the planets, 5 dwarf planets, a large number of Small Solar System Bodies (including comets and asteroids), and the interplanetary medium. A planet is any of the eight major celestial bodies. The inner solar system contains the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars; The planets of the outer solar system are Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

Generally, a computer is any electronic data-processing device that performs tasks, such as mathematical calculations or electronic communication, under the control of a set of instructions called a program. Programs usually reside within the computer's main memory and are retrieved and processed by the computer's electronics, and the program results are stored or routed to output devices, such as video display monitors or printers.

No one knows precisely when humans first started a sustained, systematic practice of agriculture, but evidence has shown signs of agriculture in the Middle East and Mexico that date back to approximately 7000 BC. Some of the earliest cultivated crops included emmer wheat, wild barley, pumpkin, peas, and beans. The presence of larger scale, systematic cultivation often preceded or accompanied the rise of villages and cities and the formation of organized civilization.

Buy Science & Inventions Posters At AllPosters.com

Physics is the science of Nature in the broadest sense. Physicists study the behaviour and interactions of matter and energy, which are referred to as physical phenomena. Physics is the study of matter, energy, motion, and forces. Physics is a major branch of science, concerned with the fundamental components of the universe, the forces they exert on one another, and the results produced by these forces.

Science is the objective pursuit of reliable knowledge. Although one might "know" something through authority, faith, or intuition, scientific method is distinct in that it must be possible for other investigators to ascertain the truth of scientific theories. Its founded on objective observation, the formulation of hypotheses that fit the data and predict other posibilities, repeatable experiments that can fail as well as succeed, and analysis and review by the scientific community.

Mathematics is the study of numbers, sets of points, and various abstract elements, together with relations between them and operations performed on them. Originally mathematics was concerned with the properties of numbers and space, as the science of quantity, whether of magnitudes, as in geometry, or of numbers, as in arithmetic, or the generalization of these two fields, as in algebra.