WHERE IS IT FROM?
A week after Valentines Day, what do you do with a bouquet of flowers that you gave your wife? Make microscope slides from the pollen, of course!
I tapped the open dried flowers over the slides, placed a drop of Cytoseal 60 on a coverslip, and gently positioned it over the pollen. I do this will every flower where I can identify the species. See my Pollen webpage for more.
White Tulip Pollen at about 250x magnification, using polarization filters and interference plastic. This make ordinary looking yellow pollen more interesting. Helicon focus stack of 4 images.
White Tulip Pollen at about 250x magnification, using brightfield to show natural color of the pollen. Helicon Focus program stack of 4 images.
Tulip Pollen in Darkfield at about 250x magnification using Helicon focus stacker program.
WHERE IS IT FROM?
Diatoms are actually the preserved skeletons of microanimals. Diatoms are typically found on beaches all over the world.
Diatoms are among the loveliest microfossils. They are also among the most important aquatic microorganisms today: they are extremely abundant both in the plankton and in sediments in marine and freshwater ecosystems, and because they are photosynthetic they are an important food source for marine organisms. Some may even be found in soils or on moist mosses.
The above info from:
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/chromista/bacillariophyta.html
Diatoms (above and below) at about 300x magnification, using Darkfield condenser.
Click the link (or a diatom picture) to see more diatom photos.
WHERE IS IT FROM?
My wife and I went to Bermuda on a cruise. Rather than mess around with little plastic bags of specimens (like I usually do), I just bought the bottle of sand they sell to tourists. It is authentic Bermuda sand, and the money for the specimen goes to help local vocational and social programs. There is no danger of the sand running out. It is scooped up from the coastal waters, dried, sifted and bottled. These sales represent a very tiny fraction of the sands of Bermuda.
Pink Bermuda Sand is comprised mostly of microscopic pieces of pink coral and very tiny colored shells. Above photo is at a magnification of 100x. Below at magnification of about 25x.
WHERE IS IT FROM?
Where is it from?
Our white Persian cat is pedigreed. Therefore we know that this sample of cat hair is from a purebred, and good for comparison to other breeds. You can see a big difference in the medullary index between a cat and a baby tiger! That is the ratio between the inner core size and the outher diameter of the hair. It is one way to identify types of hair in forensics.
White Persian Cat hair photographed as about 250x magnification. Cross polarization gave some nice color to what would normally be ordinary white hair.
WHERE IS IT FROM?
Squirrels think they are clever, as you know. Well- how to capture a hair sample?
Whiskers were captured using the device below. I coated two slides with spray adhesive and taped them next to a corn cob in a recessed tub. Squirrel had to brush his whiskers against the slides to eat the corn.
Now who's more clever?
Squirrel Whisker hair and Root
One hair shows cortex and medulla; the other hair shows the root.
The root of a hair is where D.N.A. is found. It can also tell an investigator whether the hair has been pulled out or shed naturally.
WHERE IS IT FROM?
It's from a pure spore sample sent to me by the USDA. The sample was set to us for use in a school science fair project on Sunflower Crop Science.
Downy Mildew is a plant fungus that harms, grapes, onions, garlic, sunflower, and other crops. Learn more about this on the National Sunflower Association Website. You can see info on the University of Connecticut Website as well.
DOWNY MILDEW
Spores and Hyphae Stained with Gentian Violet. Dried and mounted in Cytoseal 60. Photo using 10x WF and 25x Zeiss Achromat plus 1.2x magnification changer. Brightfield Technique. Stack of 4 photos with Helicon Focus.
See more Downy Mildew Pictures here.
WHERE IS IT FROM?
It's from my tie rack. I cut a small piece from a 100% silk tie. I mounted the piece and a few fibers, which I spread out onto the slide.
Silk fibers in woven section of the tie above, and separated below. These are the white fibers, in crossed polarization. Magnification approx 100x above, and 250x below. Combination of 4 photos using Helicon Focus stacking software.
WHERE IS IT FROM?
Ascorbic Acid crystals are added to boiling water, and mixed in. A drop of the water was placed on the slide, and allowed to cool and crystalize. The slide was made permanent using Cytoseal 60 and a coverglass.
Ascorbic Acid Crystals (Vitamin C) with polarized light at about 100x magnification.
Ascorbic Acid Crystals (Vitamin C) with polarized light at about 250x magnification.
WHERE IS IT FROM?
Epsom Salt is added to boiling water, and mixed in. A drop of the water was placed on the slide, and allowed to cool and crystalize. The slide was made permanent using Cytoseal 60 and a coverglass.
To obtain great microphotographs of crystals- use a polarizing filter above and below the slide. Then, take a clear piece of plastic (I use a CD case) and move it between the condenser and the bottom polarizer. This creates great color effects, which you can see on my Crystals webpage.
How to do a SCIENCE FAIR PROJECT?
Magnesium Sulphate (Epsom Salt) -Polarized light 28 X
Magnesium Sulphate (Epsom Salt) -Polarized light about 100x magnification
WHERE IS IT FROM?
We visited a Timber Wolf sanctuary and had the opportunity to get very close up to the wolves (above photo). They did quite a bit of rubbing up against the fence, and deposited clumps of hair in certain areas. I naturally took some specimens from which I made slides.
Copyright (c) 2002 Lakota Wolf Preserve
Timber Wolf hair - Magnification approx. 250x. Used oblique lighting and stacked 4 images in Helicon Focus.
To measure medulary index, I adjusted the oblique lighting below:
What is medullary index?
A hair in cross section can be visualized as being like a pencil. The medulla is the lead. The cortex is the wood. The cortex surrounds the medulla as does the wood of a pencil around the lead. Microscopic structures within the cortex such as pigment granules and fusi (air bubbles) are used to compare one hair to another (Saferstein, 2004) (Kubic & Patraco, 2003). The cuticle is the paint covering the wood (Bisbing, 2002). The medullary index is used to distinguish animal hair from human hair. It is expressed as a ratio of the shaft diameter to the diameter of the medulla (Saferstein, 2004). In animals the medulla will make up more than 1/2 of the total diameter of the hair. In humans the ratio is usually less than 1/3 (Saferstein, 2004).
WHERE IS IT FROM?
We visited a nature exhibit where you can pet and handle baby white tiger cubs. I always carry a lint roller for such occasions. This guarantees that the specimen is real.
Baby White Tiger Hair photographed as about 250x magnification.
I combined incident light from above using fiber optic cable, and polarized light from below. Both pictures are stacks of 4 images at different depths of focus using Helicon Focus stacking software. The result is what looks like a cross section of the hair sliced in half lengthwise.
WHERE IS IT FROM?
Where is it from?
I personally purchased my Blue Morpho specimen when I was in Brasil, in 1984. I felt very guilty about if for years, thinking that I was contributing to an endangering of a species. I recently found out that in actuality, these commercially prepared specimens sold to tourists come from butterfly farms. These farms provide people in Brasil with source of income and at the same time prevent them from destroying the rainforest to clear land for cattle raising, logging etc. Eggs laid on leaves in the wild rainforests are collected and hatched in the farms. In the wild, only a very small percentage (about 5%) of butterfly eggs survive to adulthood. Butterfly farms have much higher survival rates, approximately 80%. Habitat protection is also important because butterfly caterpillars will only eat certain plants from their habitat, so these plants are also collected. In any case I decided to destroy the specimen I had, rather than display it, and save only a few prepared slides of the wind scales.
In making the slide, tiny bubbles of oil appeared in the Cytoseal resin, because butterfly wings have a natural oil for protection of the insect.
Scale from a Blue Morpho butterfly wing. Photo is a combination of 8 photos, differing in focus, to yield a picture that is almost all in focus. Software used is Helicon Focus. Magnification is about 400x, using a 40x objecting and 10x eyepiece.
If you are wondering where is the bright blue color- here is the answer.
This butterfly's wings are a beautiful, shimmering blue, a color so bright that naturalists have reported seeing the flash of blue wings from a quarter of a mile away. You might think that such a vibrant color comes from blue pigment—but there is no blue pigment in the butterfly's wings.
As you will see above and in the actual slide, the Blue Morpho butterfly's wing is covered with tightly packed rows of clear scales. No color at all !
These clear scales form layers that reflect blue light. Each layer is 62 nanometers thick and the layers are 207 nanometers apart. This spacing is exactly what's needed to reflect that shimmering blue light. Spacing of other distances will reflect light of other colors. The interaction of light with these nanoscale structure creates the brilliant blue color of the butterfly's wings.
Painted Daisy (Pyrethrum)
Not only is bouquet
of flowers for your wife's birthday, but it's a great way to make some
new slides.
I created a chamber slide which encapsulated the pollen in air- so I could photograph in a more natural way. By putting spacers between two coverslips with pollen in between, I then sealed the edges with high viscosity Cytoseal 260. This coverslip chamber was then mounted on a slide with low viscosity Cytoseal 60.
Pollen from Painted Daisy (Pyrethrum)
Brightfield.
Photographed at about 250x magnification.
Pollen
from Painted Daisy. Incident Lighting. Unmounted pollen in a chamber slide
shows natural appearance. This made from using stack of 4 photos
From Sunflowers in a field in Virginia
Pollen from Sunflower. Incident Lighting. Unmounted pollen in a chamber slide shows natural appearance. This made from using stack of 4 photos.
Your choice of standard permanent mount in Cytoseal 60, or in a chamber slide.