Naked Science Forum

Life Sciences => Cells, Microbes & Viruses => Topic started by: grasscells on 26/01/2005 22:34:08

Title: Grass cells through a microscope ?
Post by: grasscells on 26/01/2005 22:34:08

when u look in a microscope, you cant see the cell's parts(nucleus(r dots)mitochondria,golgi,er,and anything else). i hope to become a grass scientist and look at grass cells. i am intermidiate with the microscope and i have a 40x,100x,400x zoom. plz tell me if i can see the parts with this zoomage, or if i need higher zoom.

  thanks
  alex

Title: Re: Grass cells through a microscope ?
Post by: nilmot on 28/01/2005 09:41:30

In order to see the detail structure of organelle of a cell you need a very strong magnification. Something like a electron microscope. Smallest wavelength of light is not small enough to determine something as small as mitochondria which have a length of I think few micrometer if not even smaller.

Tom

Title: Re: Grass cells through a microscope ?
Post by: mindtaker on 05/02/2005 07:16:08

Grass cells are larger and should be visible without any oil immersion.  However, nilmot is right it is much harder to see many of the organelles.  The nucleus and maybe if you can properly stain the cells some larger organelles will be visible.

Title: Re: Grass cells through a microscope ?
Post by: Ylide on 07/02/2005 11:34:48

It's not that the organelles are too small to see at this magnification...quite the contrary.  It's the fact that they are colorless and indistinguishable from the cellular matrix that poses the problem.  You either need to stain the cells or obtain a phase-contrast light microscope which will allow you to see varying depths and structures within the cell without staining.  These do not come very cheap however, you're probably better off looking into staining.  



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Title: Re: Grass cells through a microscope ?
Post by: MayoFlyFarmer on 04/04/2005 07:11:06

Speaking of expensice microscopes, and phase contrast; we just got a new one.  It has a new feature called IMC (can't remember what it stands for) but its basically the new "step up" from phase contrast. HOLY 3-D!!!!  If you ever get a chance to check one out, I recomend it, its so cool.  I'm not sure how many companies offer it or if its a patented technology etc. but ours is from Leica (the only company worth buying scopes from anyway).

Are YOUR mice nude? [;)]

Title: Re: Grass cells through a microscope ?
Post by: Quantum cat on 18/04/2005 23:10:09

I remember once in biology we made slides with onion cells, which are pretty big and easy to see. We dyed them but I can't remember what with (all I remember is they were purple ... ) so get yourself some dye designed for slides and learn how to dye cells then you'll be able to distinguish them. It's also really hard to slice them thin enough ... the person who got them the thinest was still many cell layers thick but the good thing is if you cut it in the right plane your focus can focus on an entire plane of cells at once and the other layers don't matter.

Title: Re: Grass cells through a microscope ?
Post by: rosy on 19/04/2005 00:05:13

I think in biology lesons we dyed onion cells blue-black (sort of purple-ish, I guess) by using iodine water to colour the starch.