RogerTheBug

Hello everybody ! My 17 years old daughter and me are interested in buying a microscope with enough power to be able to (let's say it that way) "see some cells in action and distinguish its parts, and also some bacteria and so on." I know that it largely depends on the size of the different cells, bacterias and other subjects etc (I suppose virus are too small to see... I wonder if searching a microscope around 150€ is a good try, and if a good second hand one could be a better option to have a better one than a brand new but less powerful one. Do you have any specific brand or model to start with ? Thanks in advance 😉

First of all, forgive my language and technical errors: My questions are a mix of concrete science and phylosophycal ones What makes proteins, ribosomes, and mRNA do what they do? I mean, i.e. ribosomal protein HGNC 14275 moves and then interacts with some other proteins because of its size, weight, electrical charges? Example: If me, as a human go to watch a movie, it’s because ‘I want’ = I am 'moving' because I have 'WILL'. So, I go to the theater, pay the price and watch the film… But a protein? If left alone inside a nucleus cell, will it move because ‘it wants (HAVE IT WILL ?!)’ or because the reactions caused by its physical properties and its interactions (size, weigth, electrical charges) - are they OBSERVABLE ? On the microscope you can see cells moving and acting independently. But do their components 'feel' and 'act' the same way? What is the minimal ‘biological component’ OBSERVABLE with this ‘free will’ behavior? I’m just trying to understand how it could be possible to ‘debug’ life, like in reverse engineering software programs. Bringing that 'debugging' process to the extreme, let's imagine this scenario trying to understand why I am writing this message, or in other words, why I WANT to write this message and get an answer: That's because I have illusion and need to find the ultimate truths for life and for my own feelings and the meaning of my life. So, that brings me to the next question: Why I FEEL that way... ? Why all my components of ME are acting together in 'harmony' to make this post ? Could some day this behaviour be 'self-debuggable' as in computer science ? The pieces of a clock move because of physics reactions… but proteins? they move and act because of physics and chemical reactions? or are there some unseen force that drives them to act and nobody knows why? Let me put the question in another way: A unicellular organism seems to have ‘free will’; If we split it up in smaller parts, which parts are the ones that still seem to have ‘free will’ ? When we split its parts and then we see smaller ones that still do behave in some ways, what are the reasons they do what they do ? They move because of gravity/chemical reactions/physical reasons ? Where is the barrier ? A virus is not a living thing ? Why ‘it’ moves and acts, then ? What causes it to happen ? Are scientists able to see subcomponents, proteins, moving and acting ? Are they able to ‘record’ them ‘doing its things ?’ and unable to explain how they do it ? If, somebody is tempted to answer me saying, e.g. that at the end, all our reations are due to chemical and physical reactions, I would answer her/him by asking "sure; Could you demonstrate it by a concrete and totally comprehensive example ? If I 'give you' an example, let's say a cute water bear (a tardigrade), could someone "debug" why it is moving by describing all the reactions and components that makes it 'live' and act ? ... Thanks in advance, Roger 'the bug'