I’m so excited to play with a foldscope. I’ve been hooked on the microscopic world since first looking through a scope in 5th grade. As a kid, I’ll never forget asking Santa for a microscope and getting this horrid, plastic thing that didn’t work. Later, my parents both me a used monocular Bausch and Lomb scope. The hours I spent looking through that scope at the water from our backyard creek in Alabama were so numerous I remember going to the eye doctor because my eyesight was so strained. I was prescribed time out from the scope for 2 weeks. Those were a long 2 weeks! Those early days on the microscope set my mind in the 5th grade to go into Biology. Throughout my career – undergrad, masters, PhD, and now as a post-doctoral researcher and blogger, I still am fascinated with the microscopic world. Now my goal is to share that with others. I blog about the human microbiome and microbiology education at my personal blog – www.mostlymicrobes.com. Foldscope will now be an integral part of that journey. I’ll post my foldscope photos here and share what I’m finding. I’m also excited to see what my girls (8 and 3 year old) will bring back when they are playing outside with their neighborhood pals. Many thanks to the Prakash lab for their brilliant work that allows the microscopic world to be opened to everyone!
Below are some diatoms from Kaylor Point in Maryland. These are the slides that Dr. Richard Hoover taught me how to make for my 9th grade science fair project back in 1986. The first image is a low mag, to give you an idea of what the spread looked like. The next three photos are of a 3-rayed Actinoptychus heliopelta . I was playing a little with the lighting to try to get some pseudo-darkfield to get some of the colors to pop a bit more. Looking forward to sharing more.