Q?Crew Captain Talk – 'Working in a Microscopy Lab'

Q?Crew Captain Justin describes helping visitors in the Q?rius Collections Zone, and his subsequent internship in the museum's microscopy lab. He learned how to prepare samples for the scanning electron microscope (SEM), which has a magnification of 1.2 million times. He also learned the value of a different perspective, because the samples looked totally different under the SEM — like "alien worlds" — than under a regular stereo microscope.

Q?Crew teen volunteers are the passionate and enthusiastic face of the museum, greeting and orienting visitors from around the world to Q?rius, the Coralyn W. Whitney Science Education Center at the National Museum of Natural History.

As part of the 2017 Q?Crew program, the volunteers created these TED-style talks to share their stories.