The Microscopist's Mate, part 3 of many

Just for the record, all of what you find here, and in the other blogs in this series, is now available in fuller detail in my e-book Looking at Small Things.  Go to this link to find out more about how to get the free low-resolution copy, or the cheap high-resolution version: I'm a professional writer, so I like selling books, but I'm also a professional educator, so I like sharing ideas.

There's a similar free or cheap deal on offer for my Playwiths ebook as well, and to see what else I have been doing (LOTS!), go to this link.

Here are the links to Part 1 and Part 2.

Today, I will be talking about a neat little trick for lighting, not the green slime I said I would be on about. What I actually write about here depends on what I am working on, and yesterday, I had an idea.

There are going to be times when you want to shine a light through a specimen, especially when they are looking at slide mounts. I have messed with a few rigs, and I will be building a more sturdy one, one of these days, but here’s a quick and dirty version.

The good thing about quick and dirty versions is that you get the wrong steps thrown in as well, because that detail will help you make a better model for yourself. here's how I started this adventure, by gathering the items below:

What you need: a jar, a headlamp with LEDs, scissors, and some translucent plastic cut from a milk bottle.

 After I took this shot, I added sticky tape to the list. I used a 400 gram jar, because you can sit a microscope slide on top. These next four pictures tell the story.

     
I realised as soon as I tried this out that the camera microscope was focusing on roughness in the plastic, so I replaced the plastic with a piece of tracing paper and stuck that to the jar.

In my final version, I plan to have the diffusion layer (the plastic) 2 cm below the slide, but for now, I am using this arrangement to steady the camera.

Remember that one of my major concerns will always be camera shake. The Go Micro clip-on is resting on a microscope slide that is across the jar. It’s primitive, but it works!

The first rule of gadgeteering, though, is never to give up while you are ahead. The next morning, I spied one of those clear plastic throw-away containers that, typically in our house, had not been thrown away, but been used to store something important, like pieces of string too short to be of any use. Anyhow, it was pressed into operation, but an image of the base showed through:

I could work around that, but  I went straight to Mark III, seen in the second and third shots. This one uses a square flexible plastic box that is just sturdy enough.

 And here is how it looks when i light the head lamp:

The thing is, though, that the morning I did this, I had some sand samples that were dry enough to look at, and for most purposes, you don’t want back-lighting on sand (yes, I have some plans to work with crossed polarisers later, but this is now). So needing a light from above, I reached for the original Mark I and a bit of black cardboard, and took these next two shots.

I could have done without the slide here, just laying the sand on the cardboard, but I had something else in mind. Using the paint brush, I spread the sand out and got the shot below, a 9 mm diameter field of shoreline sand taken from St Heliers Bay in New Zealand.

I am conservative about the biosecurity of specimens like this, so even though marine sand is not an import that must be declared, all my samples were both microwaved and baked in an oven before they came anywhere near Australia. Sand from freshwater lakes, on the other hand, must be declared, but my interests are fully taken up with marine sand.

Anyhow, that has solved most of my present lighting problems, and I hope it has helped with yours!

Maybe next time, it will be green slime time, but then again, it might be sand or pill bugs, which used to be sold as a cure for all sorts of ills.