A Patriotic Microscope Lesson: Benjamin Franklin

One of the first  Biology lessons I do is to pull out different microscopes and let the kids take a look at dollar bills.  I have some foreign currency, too, left from trips we use.  (Sometimes the cost to convert is more than the amount of currency we have remaining.  The zloty to usd is $.025.). There is a recent article in the Wall Street Journal from Nature examine the tools Benjamin Franklin used to keep others from counterfeiting early colonial currency.  Compare with modern anti-counterfeiting methods.  We use one, five, ten, and twenty dollar bills for the lesson.  It’s a fun way to learn how to focus the microscopes.  Isn’t it cool to think about how Benjamin Franklin planned so many different ways to thwart counterfeiters?  Just keeping our Founding Fathers fresh!