One of the promises of the Internet is to put resources into the hands of those who wouldn’t otherwise be able to access them. We often think of that in terms of information and data. But as the Imaging Technology Group at the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign demonstrates, the Internet can also enable people to access hardware resources, not just software or information.
In the case of the Beckman Institute, it’s a $600,000 electron microscope that can now be used remotely. Called Bugscope, the project allows K-12 and undergraduate students to access and control the electron microscope from their classroom and view — as the name suggests — bug samples at up to a 20,000-fold magnification.
Classes can mail in their insect specimens or use those provided by Bugscope. Doing so allows them to examine insect anatomy that’s too small for regular classroom microscopes (which typically magnify up to 1000 times).
