#microscope slides

[lunar-goodness]

Got the slides back from my first histology training!! They said I did really well! I brought them home to look at with my microscope.

Random rat tissue pictures!

[mayuripng]

I made my first (slightly) successful and properly-made microscope slide this weekend!!! :D

It's tomato skin! I'm unsure if it's called tomato peel or tomato skin, so I'll just call it both. Look, what can I say? English isn't my native language, y'all can't judge me too much, lol.

It was relatively easy to prepare the slide, since I didn't need any dyes to view the cells. I cut a tiny piece of a tomato with my scalpel, and with the help of tweezers I slowly peeled the piece (if I tried to remove it fast, the skin would break apart). I also scraped the inside of the skin with the scalpel to make sure no tomato bits were stuck to it.

After making sure the slide was clean (I personally don't think I need to worry too much about it being perfect, because this is a hobby! It's not meant to be an actual professional slide. Especially since I have never taken classes on any of this). I put the skin on top of it with the tweezers, and then I put a single droplet of water on top of the skin.

The hardest part for me was to place the coverslip. I know I need to place it at a 45⁰ degree angle on top of the slide, and then slowly lower it until it's covering the specimen (or else air gets trapped inside and makes it hard to view the image.)

Doing that was waaaaay harder than I thought it was going to be.

After endless suffering and having to restart because I messed up, I finally got it right.

This is the result!

This is the tomato skin on 100x magnification on an optic microscope.

Unfortunately, my phone is really low quality, so the photo is also very low quality. Seeing it on the microscope was way better, trust me.

I'm thinking about what to try next. :)

[callmemanatee]

I made these pretend microscope slides out of paper and cardboard. They're 1" × 3" just like real microscope slides.

[vertbral]

[thinkingimages]

William Allott Firth, 1853-1923

W.A. Firth is widely recognized as one of the premier diatom slide preparers of all-time. He mounted slides with single species (consisting of several specimens that illustrate different angles of view), test slides with lines of several species that have differently-sized microscopic structures, slides with arrangements of 10-12 species from a certain location, or geometric arrangements of numerous different species. From the late 1890s onward, Firth sold his preparations, either with his own labels or through professional retailers (Figures 1 and 2). In addition to diatoms, Firth also prepared slides of foraminifera, spicules from Synapta, butterfly wings and scales, and various other small objects (Figures 3 and 4).

[meiwoscience]

Forgive my poor photography skill, these microscope slides actually look perfect and very delicate.

[laurail]

Stem tissue under light microscope

[caffeineandconstellations]

Throwback to the one and only botany class I've ever had to take. I loved some of it (scientific drawing anyone?) But, the professor was not my favorite.