Page 6 - Demo

Step 1: Making a template. We are going to make slides which have tiny wells on them. Put a cover slip onto a piece of paper, and draw a line around it using a pencil or pen. Remove the slip and put a glass slide over your drawn square so the square is dead centre. Draw around the slide. Keep the pencil tip or pen tip as close as possible to the edges of the coverslip and the slide when drawing. Be precise. Step 2: Before making the well slides. The idea here is to make a thin wall on the slide to hold the liquid and specimen. The walls need not be high at all for our cheek cells but for other specimens, you need to make the wall high enough for the specimen to sit down in the mountant (fructose) without the coverslip sitting on it. So, the well must be deeper than any given specimen depth. Step 3: Making the well slides. We will build our %u2018well%u2019 walls using layers of PVA glue. Put a glass slide on your template. Take a fine brush, dip it in the PVA, and paint a square on the glass just inside the small square you drew for the coverslip. Do this neatly. You only need a thin border of equal thickness and equal depth with no gaps. Let it dry. For deeper wells, repeat this process several times. Step 4: Mounting the swabbed cheek cell. Dampen a cotton bud and wipe inside your cheek. Then wipe the bud onto the slide. Put a tiny drop of water onto the slide, where you wiped the bud. Use a brush to put a tiny drop of Methylene Blue into the mix and spread it lightly. Avoid making air bubbles by gently stirring with the tip of the brush. Leave for a minute or two for the stain to work well. A few tips 1) It%u2019s best to use distilled water not tap water so it is completely free of minerals and fluoride. I actually used tap water here, (it%u2019s fluoride-free) so I ignored this! 2) Hot water, not boiling is best. Stir well, several times in the next few hours. 3) Place on a hot radiator or use a pan of very hot water, but not boiling, and stand the jar in that to dissolve the sugar. Make sure the heat is off. 4) Leave in this warm place until it is clear. A few days more if you want to be sure the liquid is free of air bubbles.Glass Slide PVA Glue Wall Coverslip 1 2 3 4 Swabbing Staining. 21