Send us your sample

This strikes me as being a really fun option for teachers of the sciences (among other things).

A company called ASPEX, which produces scanning electron microscopes (SEMs) and microanalysis software has kicked off a campaign called Send us your Sample, which invites anyone to send in an object of their choosing and have it scanned free of charge under one of their SEMs.

You can send in anything you like - a toy bunny, a dead bug or an old toothbrush. It's pretty cool. See their image gallery here.

They also have a rather fun thing called 'name that sample' where you have to guess from the 'after' picture what the object is. Could you have guessed that this was an image of Hall's cough drops? If so, you might have won yourself an Apple iPod Touch.