LSU began introducing a prototype SCOPE-ON-A-ROPE (SOAR) to selected teachers in Louisiana and Tennessee three years ago as part of our K-12 outreach activities. It proved to be an invaluable aid to all K-12 classrooms as well as to college classrooms or laboratories in several disciplines. The SOAR is extremely easy to use in the normal classroom setting, but can also introduce sophisticated concepts usually possible only through complicated microscopy exercises with specialized instrumentation.

The professional microscopist who occasionally teaches students how to use microscopes can only begin to appreciate the position of classroom teachers who are routinely faced with inadequate, insufficient microscopes for classes of 20- 30 students at a time. This SOAR, inspired by industrial inspection devices, aids the teacher in introducing valuable concepts in microscopy and scale while easily serving the functions of many different microscopes and accessories. It is a comfortably hand-held device that can be used capably even by a five-year-old to provide excellent,