\nI tend to do all that on a screen, with 3-D glasses. The first time a lysine side-chain brushes your nose you’ll never want to go back to 2-D. But it’s (a) quite expensive to get 3-D on LCD screens and (b) everyone prints the figures out anyway. So structural biologists are wont to print stereo diagrams in their papers. My previous boss, who must have suffered from the same sort of evolutionary history, kept a set of viewers in his drawer. These are two glass lenses in a metal frame, with swinging metal legs so that you could place the things over a picture, peer down and see in stereo. Very useful, simple to operate, and almost impossible to replace if \nSo for the last couple of years I’ve been reduced to either squinting (and looking out for larger predators) or giving up in disgust, going to the PDB<\/a>, downloading the files and trying to imagine it in 3-D by rotating the thing on my screen.<\/p>\n \nBut a couple of weeks ago in the office I came across a veritable wonder of modern technology. Ladles and gentlespoons, I present the Stereopticon 707:<\/p>\n \n \nThis flimsy bit of card with two plastic lenses actually folds flat, and what’s more, does exactly what it claims to. It is so simple, so easy to use and cheap<\/a> that I can’t help thinking it should come with every undergraduate textbook.<\/p>\n \n \nIsn’t she just wonderful?<\/p>\n \n You know those stereo images so belov\u00e9d of structural-type people? The ones you get in journals where you’re supposed to be able to squint somehow and see it in 3-D? I’ve never been able to pull off that trick. Never … Continue reading stolen<\/del> lost or broken.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3036\/2579564539_2a37882ec6.jpg\")
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\nSide elevation<\/em><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3050\/2579563719_84cfe8f58e.jpg\")
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