Microscope Slide

The study of human cell anatomy is difficult in some respects, but again microscope slides of human cell specimens can be prepared or purchased. But let’s begin at the top. Most microscopists can supply plenty of their own hairs to examine. With the use of the microscope, compare a hair of your own to specimens from other people, to an eyebrow hair, to an eyelash (if one of the latter should fall out do not pull it out), to hairs from animal fur. A half-inch section works best in a wet mount microscope slide.

By scraping the inside of your cheek with the wide end of a toothpick, a smear of the surface cells can be obtained and placed on the microscope slide in a drop of water. Handle them gently, as they are fragile. A drop of neutral red prepared stain may bring out the nuclei beautifully, or you can experiment with other stains on a microscope. These layers of squamous cell epithelium are being shed and replaced constantly but at different speeds over the body surface.

Sometime around 1655, Borel looked upon blood through an early microscope and saw that it was far more than simply a red liquid, for it contained whale or porpoise shaped insects that swam about. These were the red blood cells, or red corpuscles erythrocytes, which he was the first to see on the microscope. You can observe them for the small price of a needle prick on a microscope slide. Although they are tiny for viewing with the average home microscope, a better understanding of blood can be gained. White corpuscles, or leucocytes, cannot easily be discerned without proper staining. Use Wright’s stain if your school science laboratory has it. You may have a degree of success with blue fountain pen ink. The small, ragged-edged platelets aid in clot formation.

To prevent possible infection of the skin break you are about to make, the skin must be thoroughly washed first, and needle and skin must be sterilized. If you tape a sharp needle to a slide and view its point under medium power, and call up a vision of bacteria you may have seen in the microscope, you can estimate how many germs might be able to make an entry. The best procedure is to assemble the following equipment and then wash your hands. Candle and match, Alcohol (70%), sterile cotton or gauze, sharp needle, clean slide and slide cover, as well as Vaseline if desired.

Swab the tip of a left hand finger with alcohol, if you are right-handed and are operating upon yourself. Hold needlepoint in candle flame until needle is too warm to hold, and then prick the disinfected fingertip quickly, when the needle has cooled a bit. Hold the pricked hand downward and make repeated fists until blood comes.

ce a drop of blood on the microscope slide, and with one edge of the slide cover gently wipe the blood out into a very thin layer, before laying the slide cover over it. Observe under high power. If you wish to keep the slide from drying up too quickly, use a bit of Vaseline on a toothpick to seal the slide around the edges of the slide cover and make the blood smear airtight. Red corpuscles will be more pinkish yellow than you expected. Erythrocytes are unusual cells in that they have no nucleus when mature. Leucocytes have nuclei, some of which are very irregular and have peculiar shapes. Leucocytes can move, amoeba like, through the blood vessel walls for the purpose of ingesting harmful bacteria in the same way an amoeba ingest its food. From seeing these you can appreciate the incalculable number required to keep a person alive.

Looking through the microscope, you may see something so striking that you wish to show it to others or study it again later. You may have a series of slides to record the changes in some plant at different parts at different seasons, or collect slides of different parts of some insect. If you wish to preserve your experiment, then, you need a permanent mounting.
Although not all specimens are equally well to preserved, one of the good example to preserved is the insect parts, because they are fairly dry and solid.

To start doing the mounting process:
Place your specimen on the slide, add a few drops of a neutral mounting material that can be thinned with ordinary isopropyl alcohol, hardens into a colorless, transparent, glasslike substance and top this with a cover glass.
Then let the slide dry in a warm place so that it will harden more quickly. One way to do this is to place the slide on your work tab le and bend a gooseneck lamp fairly close to it. Allow the bulb to warm the slide for several hours until it hardens.

Permanent mounts can last for years so before you store your collection make sure you label them. Paste a label on each slide or mark it with a wax-tipped pencil. Record the name of the specimen, the date, and the stain, if any, used in the preparation. You can number the slides or keep an alphabetical list to help you find what you are looking for.

You may also wish to supplement your own side collection with ready-made slides from a biological supplier. Possibilities range from a variety of insect parts to plant tissue, bacteria, and cells from various organs of the body.

Wet mounting is a mounting process, which used usually to study the components of liquid. Most liquids will form a few bubbles and you should learn to recognize these.

Put a small drop of a liquid laundry detergent on a slide.

With the use of narrow edge of a second slide, push the drop lengthwise across the first slide to spread it, then a drop cover gently in the center of the smear you have made.
The slide should be wet only on the inside. Focus on the slide and move it back and forth. All those large and small circles with pearly centers and thick, dark outlines are air bubbles.

For a test that will help you recognize them, turn your mirror aside so no bottom light reaches the slide. Under top lighting, the background liquid will look dark and the air bubbles will appear as brightly gleaming rings.

You could also use the milk. Again, you will see quite a few air bubbles but further, your side will be covered with small rounded shapes floating in clear liquid. These shapes are globules of fat that give milk its white color.

Any knitted garment, whether factory or handmade, is composed of a long, continuous filament, or thread, looped together in interlocking rows. Most underwear and stockings are made this way. However, the woven fabric consists of two threads. One set runs lengthwise (the warp), and the other from side to side (the wool). This basic formula allows for hundreds of different patterns and textures.
Look at several kinds of textiles. Try to spread a certain fabric (may it be a fine cotton handkerchief, a T-shirt, a nylon stocking, and a well torn terry towel) if you cannot cut and mount it, right across the stage of microscope. Materials that are thin enough for the light to penetrate from below the stage will do best in experiment. If the cloth is translucent, you will have to rely entirely on light reflected from the surface, however it will not reveal the secrets of the texture.
You could also use yarns and threads as well as unprocessed fibers such as hair and feathers.

How the paper fibers and textile fabrics look like under the microscope?
Try to examine bits of individual wood fibers and you would notice that they are spiraled, showing that they were once live cells of trees. If you compared the newsprint to stationery paper, which is made of linen fiber, is more textured. On the other hand, cigarette paper, which is made of rice straw, is thin but strong and closed-textured to make it slow in burning.

To compare the textures of different kinds of paper, cut out squares and mount them. Try paper towels, napkins, and tissues. Keep a record and write a short description of the qualities of each.
Just like paper, certain textile fabrics are also manufactured from a mash of short fibers, then dried over sieves and rolled flat. For instance, Felt is a strong water-resistant fabric of matted, pressed wool used to make hats and slippers. Most other fabrics, though, are likely to be knitted or woven.

Any knitted garment, whether factory or handmade, is composed of a long, continuous filament, or thread, looped together in interlocking rows. Most underwear and stockings are made this way. However, the woven fabric consists of two threads. One set runs lengthwise (the warp), and the other from side to side (the wool). This basic formula allows for hundreds of different patterns and textures.
Look at several kinds of textiles. Try to spread a certain fabric (may it be a fine cotton handkerchief, a T-shirt, a nylon stocking, and a well torn terry towel) if you cannot cut and mount it, right across the stage of microscope. Materials that are thin enough for the light to penetrate from below the stage will do best in experiment. If the cloth is translucent, you will have to rely entirely on light reflected from the surface, however it will not reveal the secrets of the texture.
You could also use yarns and threads as well as unprocessed fibers such as hair and feathers.

With a microscope, you can watch a crystal garden grow right on a glass slide.
You can do this by dissolving two tablespoon of salt in one-quarter cup of water. You will notice that some of the salt will remain in the bottom of the cup.
Next, place a drop of the clear liquid on a slide and let it spread a little. Put the slide aside, without the cover slip, for a few minutes. Or you could also move it back and forth under a warm light bulb until the solution begins to dry. Now, insert it under the microscope and focus on the outer portions of the drop. Soon, square crystals of different sizes will form, rimmed by dark parallel lines. Salt crystals grow faster at the edges than at the center, building up steps that look like nests of open glass boxes. Move the mirror so that no light is transmitted from below, and you will see the crystals change to gleaming three-dimensional shapes on a dark background. For crystals with different shapes, try the same experiment with your microscope by using basic acid instead of salt.
You could also find crystals of glittering quartz and other minerals by using the sand as your sample for microscopy. Under the microscope, the shape of sand grains can tell something about their history. The rounder and blunter they are, the longer they are likely to have tumbled in water or wind, rubbing their edges against one another. You might also be surprise to find a rich sprinkling of shell fragment among the sand grains. For your information, there are rare beaches which have stuff that look like a white sand but if you examine them under the microscope they will reveal themselves as a myriad of tiny shell pieces of delicate shapes and colors.