1. What are microscopic organisms?

2. Unit Standards
5.L.4B.1
Analyze and Interpret data to explain how organisms obtain their energy and classify organisms as producers, consumers (including herbivore, carnivore, and omnivore), or decomposers (such as Fungi, Bacteria insects and molds).
5.L.4B.2
Develop and use models of food chains and food webs to describe the flow of energy in an ecosystem.
5.L.4B.3
Construct explanations for how organisms interact with each other in an ecosystem (including predators and prey, and parasites and hosts).
5.L.4B.4
Construct scientific arguments to explain how limiting factors (including food, water, space, and shelter) or newly introduced organisms can affect an ecosystem.

3. What are microscopic organisms?
Microscopic organisms are found everywhere.
They live and grow on every surface in the world.
Microscopic organisms are producers, decomposers, or consumers.

4. What are microscopic organisms?
Microorganisms are an important part of Earth’s ecosystem.
They provide larger organisms with some of the food and oxygen they need to survive.
They help enrich the environment by breaking down dead organisms.

5. What are microscopic organisms?
Microscope- an instrument that produces an enlarged image of an object.
Scientists study living and nonliving microscopic organisms with an instrument called a compound light microscope.

6. What are microscopic organisms?
Compound light microscope uses two or more lenses and a light source to magnify objects. It can magnify samples up to 2,000 times.

7. What are microscopic organisms?
The lens on the bottom of the microscope’s body tube is the objective lens. The lens at the top of the body tube, nearest your eye, is called the ocular lens.

8. What are microscopic organisms?
Samples are placed on the stage pf the microscope are first magnified by the objective lens.
The image that reaches the ocular lens is then magnified again.

9. What are microscopic organisms?
Electron microscope- a powerful microscope that uses a beam if electrons, rather than a light source, to magnify samples.
Scientists study very small, nonliving organisms and other objects with an electron microscope.

10. What are microscopic organisms?
Electron microscopes cannot be used on living samples, because the streams of electrons and the preparation process would kill them.
The most commonly used electron microscope is called a scanning electron microscope, or SEM.

11. What are microscopic organisms?
The SEM can magnify samples 300,000 times.
It scans the surfaces of non-living samples and gives detailed three-dimensional images of them.