Chapter 8: Biology: Photography through the microscope Photography through a microscope Amateur microscopes and cheap cameras A simple toy microscope and a disposable camera can team up to make stunning photographs of very tiny things. The technique is simplicity itself. You simply focus the microscope carefully by eye as you would normally do. [Click on photo for larger picture] The results are suprisingly good. Basswood (Tilia) stem, 4x objective. These photos were taken with an $8.00 disposable camera. Basswood (Tilia) stem, 10x objective. The main drawback to the disposable camera is the fixed focus. Wheat kernel, 4x objective. The photos were developed normally, and scanned using an inexpensive color scanner (about $40.00). Wheat kernel, 10x objective. Wheat kernel, 40x objective. A selection of microscopes The microscope shown in the photo below is an inexpensive microscope of the type commonly sold to amateurs like us. Better microscopes give better results. The microscope shown below is made by Eagle, and is about $300. Del.icio.us Google
As Freezing Persons Recollect the Snow--First Chill--Then Stupor--Then the Letting Go Even today, scientists can't predict who hypothermia will strike down and who it will spare. Photo: Zastol`skiy Victor Leonidovich/Shutterstock The cold remains a mystery, more prone to fell men than women, more lethal to the thin and well muscled than to those with avoirdupois, and least forgiving to the arrogant and the unaware. When your Jeep spins lazily off the mountain road and slams backward into a snowbank, you don't worry immediately about the cold. Driving out of town, defroster roaring, you barely noted the bank thermometer on the town square: minus 27 degrees at 6:36. But now you're stuck. You check your watch: 7:18. Breath rolls from you in short frosted puffs. There is no precise core temperature at which the human body perishes from cold. Others are less fortunate, even in much milder conditions. The process begins even before you leave the car, when you remove your gloves to squeeze a loose bail back into one of your ski bindings. Your temperature begins to plummet.
Cell Size and Scale Some cells are visible to the unaided eye The smallest objects that the unaided human eye can see are about 0.1 mm long. That means that under the right conditions, you might be able to see an ameoba proteus, a human egg, and a paramecium without using magnification. A magnifying glass can help you to see them more clearly, but they will still look tiny. Smaller cells are easily visible under a light microscope. To see anything smaller than 500 nm, you will need an electron microscope. Adenine The label on the nucleotide is not quite accurate. How can an X chromosome be nearly as big as the head of the sperm cell? No, this isn't a mistake. The X chromosome is shown here in a condensed state, as it would appear in a cell that's going through mitosis. A chromosome is made up of genetic material (one long piece of DNA) wrapped around structural support proteins (histones). Carbon The size of the carbon atom is based on its van der Waals radius.
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