[dan-robertson]

Modern USB microscopes are extremely good. Not in the sense that the quality is somehow superb but in the sense that they can be had reasonably cheaply and give you a sufficiently magnified view to see lots of details that would not be visible to the naked eye. Importantly, they don’t require lots of the faff that a ‘proper’ microscope does, e.g. no messing around with dirty objectives or eyepieces or light sources or slides or covering slips or stains or preparing samples or two different focusing wheels or oils or whatever. And it can be a further pain if you want to get an image onto a computer whereas with a USB scope it’s already there. The point is that the lower barrier of entry can build interest and the low cost means you don’t feel so bad if you only use it once or twice.