Microscope : a nice toy to own!

I went and bought myself a microscope. A student microscope from olympus. I did some reading about buying a good scope: I found a comprehensive set of tips at http://www.greatscopes.com/microscope.htm. And olympus scope had most of what is spoken about there.

And I have seen some stuff I had never seen in 30+ years of my life so far.

The most amazing things is the intricate structure of the mosquito wing. It has very hair like structures and along the veins and at the periphery there are small leaf like structures hanging. Amazing stuff!

I wonder how that affects/modifies the flight of the mosquito.

Some sites claim that they help by reducing the drag. That seems counter intuitive. More features means more turbulence and hence more drag. (For example http://www.astrographics.com/GalleryPrintsIndex/GP2109.html claims so - thought the picture they have (except for the coloring) is very god. Colouring is misleading: you see nothing like that :-) )

Also see the interesting wing picture at http://www.entomology.cornell.edu/MedEnt/MosquitoFS/MosquitoFS.html.