Page 8 - Demo

SAFETY AND DETAILS SUMMARY Getting Results With Fructose Mounting Staining and mounting with Fructose is probably not easy to master straight away. It takes practice to get good results. You don%u2019t really need to use a mountant on cheek cells as it%u2019s easy to just obtain them, stain them, and see them straight away. If you stained or just simply mounted something you can see with your eye, it%u2019s easier. I wanted you to discover how to stain specimens, use fructose as a mounting medium, and seal a slide. If you fail to get the result you wanted, try again. Once you master the technique, you%u2019ll be able to use it to preserve other things you find to look at again in the future. Put a small label on slides you make & wish to keep, date it and title it. Fructose can be overly syrupy or over-diluted. With some specimens, it works well to mix some fructose with a little water to dilute it and leave the specimen in that (in a small dish, maybe) for a few hours before moving the specimen onto a slide and mounting it with Fructose. This will help to ensure air and water move out of the specimen and some diluted fructose moves into it%u2014keeping the specimen%u2019s structure intact and allowing the non-diluted fructose to creep into the structure. One of the issues with mounting anything (putting a specimen into a more fixed state) is air. It can get mixed into a liquid solution and can visually impair viewing by causing air bubbles to obscure what you are looking at. In most circumstances, if you are very careful, it is avoidable. Safety, Stains, And Using Methylene Blue. Methylene blue is a safe stain even if consumed in small doses. But it can cause toxicity in high doses. Just don't drink it! Most chemicals are toxic if you drink or eat them in high enough quantities, even water%u2014actually, but using them in a prescribed way, as I have described is fine! Use disposable gloves to avoid staining your skin and work on an area with paper towels beneath to ensure you don%u2019t accidently stain other things. Methylene Blue is used to stain (dye) cheek cells because it stains DNA & RNA more readily than cytoplasm. The cell nucleus contains the DNA and RNA so it stains much darker than the matter in the surrounding cell cytoplasm. It also stains bacteria which are the little dots you see in your samples. It is also an effective stain on dead cells. Take a look at page 57 to find out what stains are best to use for different subjects. Coverslips Thin sheets of glass like coverslips break easier than you think. Always work with them over a kitchen towel. If you break one, the tiny fragments of glass will likely fall onto the paper which you can carefully fold up, put in an envelope and deposit in the trash. I work with my hands when using them, but it is advised, especially if you are young, to handle them with tweezers so if anything goes wrong, you do not risk getting tiny slithers of glass into your hands. If you need to clean one, lay it on a flat surface, press it down and clean it with water and mop up with kitchen towel. Looking At Things Under A Microscope When observing microscopic subjects and objects, you have to put a different kind of thinking into place. When looking at macro objects in the everyday world, it%u2019s relatively simple (most of the time) to interpret what we see. When looking at things in a micro world, one we are unfamiliar with, it requires practice and building up knowledge. Often, you are looking at a thin section cut from a larger microscopic subject%u2014it%u2019s a bit like looking at Google Earth and trying to work out what the %u2018flattish%u2019 objects are. Results Here is the result at low power. I expected them to appear sharper. Maybe I should have stained them for longer, or perhaps the solution is too weak. You can increase the solution by adding a little more fructose to your jar and leaving it in a warm place (on a radiator, for example) until it clears again. Practise makes perfect!23