The Bugscope project, offered through the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, allows K-12 classrooms to remotely operate a scanning electron microscope (SEM) in real time from a classroom computer to create incredibly cool images of insects and other "bugs" at high magnification. Detailed instructions for scheduling a session and...

The National Center for Electron Microscopy (NCEM), funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, supports research carried out by visiting national and international scientists. As part of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Berkeley, California, they provide access to several of the world's most advanced microscopes and tools for microcharacterization of materials. Photos and descriptions of their...

As part of the Science Learning Network, the Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) Web site explores what an SEM is, how it's used, and what images it can produce. The How It Works section has a self-paced tutorial and an interesting movie describing how it functions as well. The other section for students is the image gallery, which has the Animal, Vegetable, Mineral game. Individual images from a...