Fun with Microscopes!

Recently Maryanne got a new digital camera and I was given permission to do as I pleased with the old one. I have been using it at school for various projects but on Monday I got to thinking that it sure would be nice if I could take photos through the microscope for the grade 6 and 7 students that were away that day. I remembered that you could buy cameras for microscopes but that we would not use it enough to justify the approx $550 dollar cost. So then I decided to experiment a little bit to see if I could use the old digital camera to take a photo of my cheek cell.

My first attempt was of me just holding the camera up to the ocular lens of the compound microscope. I then looked at the display screen on the camera to try and line up everything for the shot. This was my first attempt.

What you see is an iodine stained couple of cheek cells scraped off the inside of my check with a toothpick. (Your cheek cells regularly slough off so it does not hurt to take the sample. Even my grade 6 and 7 students thought that it did not hurt.) If I recall the resolution of the microscope was 100x. You can make out the nucleus of each cell clearly. The bunched up part in the upper right hand corner is a bunch of cells that are stuck together.

This was a pretty good result but I wanted to make it more stable. I found an old thick cardboard tube that had been given to me by Dad a couple of summers ago. (They had been used to ship some sort of scientific instrument's light bulb to Dad and he thought that they were too sturdy just to toss so he gave them to me with the comment that I should see if I could do something interesting with them.) The cardboard tube fit perfectly around the ocular lens. I then but it to size to ensure that when the camera's zoom lens was out it would be as close to the eyepiece as possible without touching it. I could now brace the camera against the cardboard tube without worrying about shaking while zoomed in on high power.

I gave the new setup a good test the next day (Tuesday) with a water sample that I collected from a lake that is a 5 minute walk from the school. I was able to find a very cooperative water flea in that water.

 

Here he or she is at 400x magnification. In this photo the head is mainly in focus and the body is kind of blurry. This is due to the fact that at this level of magnification the thickness of the water flea prevents all of it from being in focus at once. Also it wouldn't really hold still.

Lastly I tried to make a video. I will add the video tomorrow. Right now Maryanne has gone to bed and I need to head that way as well.  But so far I'm pretty happy with the camera setup.

A Boy and his House Hippo: Part 1

Those of you from Canada may recall the Concerned Children's Advertisers' ad about the House Hippo from 2000.


Well, a long time ago Maryanne got some soap that had a little toy hippo in it. After I freed the hippo from his soapy prison I declared him to be my pet House Hippo. Today I decided to document some of the adventures that my House Hippo and I have together.



This is the House Hippo at his watering hole. This is his natural habitat. You can see Maryanne in the background sitting on the couch with her laptop. That is her natural habitat.



This is a picture of the House Hippo cheering on the Riders. He is looking forward to the western final. Go Riders.



Here you can see him roaring at Princess Leia. His is kinda like a Wookiee, he roars when he is happy and when he is sad. His favourite Star Wars character is Chewbacca.



This last one is of my House Hippo standing on my hand and saying hi to me.

To see the rest of the House Hippo photos check out Maryanne's Flickr account. Well that is all for now but I think that the House Hippo may become a regular on my Blog. If anyone has any activities that they would like to see the House Hippo doing let me know.

Working on not Working on Report Cards.

For a guy that claims to be immensely busy getting his report cards done by Friday I have certainly managed to have some fun over the last week.

Now some of that fun was at school which is almost like work: Sometimes you have to make your own fun during the dry moments in class to engage the students.  This might mean that you find the net force on a flying feline.

Or, it might mean that you spend a class convincing Math 11 students that they do not need to despair at turning y = (x-3)(x-1)(x+1) into a graph. If they act like CSI detectives and examine all the clues they can piece together their "crime scenes" and figure out what the graph will look like. By the end of the class we were jokingly calling each other detectives and I even promoted one boy to Sergeant when he solved a tough "case".

I did even manage to have some fun away from work.

On Saturday we hiked up and around Mount Douglas Park here in Victoria. I was able to get some nice pictures. Some on my old freebie digital camera including this one of a very friendly passing dog.

And some on Maryanne's nice new camera.

 

That is Maryanne in the distance.

Then of course on Sunday afternoon Nov 1st it was cheap candy day:

Oh and I also convinced Maryanne that I should get a Halloween Mr. Potato Head. Here he is in the dark bathroom showing off his glowing eyes.

I keep peeking him around the corner at Maryanne before I enter a room. He says "Oooooooowwhoooo" a lot.

Yeah that has been how I have been working on not working on my report cards. I am really looking forward to them being done.