Artemia sp. (brine shrimp) can be used for pedagogic purposes as an instructive model organism to demonstrate the development and maturation of small marine crustaceans within a time window suited to classroom experiments. This article describes some characteristics of Artemia and gives several hints for culturing, light microscopy observations, and photomicrography. The morphological variations and successive differentiation associated with the maturation process are presented through various types of light microscopy images. Increasing differentiations of movement patterns are considered. Moreover, some suggestions of further experiments are reported, which can be used as introductions to fundamental principles of scientific work.

For digital light microscopes, which have image sensors but no eyepieces, the image is displayed directly on an electronic monitor. This development brings a significant change to the usual way magnification of an object viewed via a microscope is determined. Over the years, there have been various standards that define magnification when viewing an image through a microscope’s eyepieces. Only recently have magnification standards been developed that apply to a digital microscope. This article offers guidelines for determining the range of useful magnification values for digital microscopy, particularly when monitors of various sizes are employed.

Generation of three-dimensional SEM micrographs is traditionally based on a pair of images showing the object from two different perspectives. Here a method is described by which the 3D effect can be obtained from a single photograph. This technique is founded upon the principle of object-depth mapping, where different depth levels of the object are encoded with different colors. This process enables the creation of an image stack that forms the basis for the 3D image. Several photographic examples from different scientific fields are provided in order to demonstrate the effectiveness of the method.