Nikki Wang

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 During Stanford’s bizzare Full Moon On the Quad, I acquired a beautiful magenta colored rose (and not mono, thankfully). Since that day, the rose has been sitting in a jar of water on my desk, looking a little less lively every day. There were, however, still a few vibrant petals near its center, and so I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to examine and compare the fresh petals with the “dead” ones.


 To prepare my samples, I ripped a portion of petal from both a dead looking petal and one that had retained much of the rose’s original color, and prepared microscope slides using a slide, double sided tape, a cover slip, and a couple of drops of water. I tried to rip sections from the middle of both petals, in case the different areas of the petals looked different.


 What I noticed, despite the obvious color disparity, was that the two petals actually looked quite similar — I looked first at the live petal and wondered if the little black dots were nuclei, and hypothesized that they might look different in the dead petal, but they look very similar. Unfortunately my foldscope was not able to focus as clearly as I would have liked, so this is a little hard to see in pictures, but I did notice little capsule-like structures around the “nuclei” in the live petal that were absent or much less defined in the dead petal.


 It was super cool to look at the same plant in two stages of its life under the foldscope — it makes me curious about what happens biologically when a plant wilts and what changes it goes through.

Loves Me, Loves Me Not&#8230; Bio60_2019

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 I had attempted looking at some of our professor’s Baylands sludge under my Foldscope before, but was disappointed to see no little creatures floating around in their little microscope-slide pool.


 This time, when I saw that little tupperware of disgusting slime in the classroom again, I was determined to find myself some little friends. Using the dropper provided in my Foldscope kit, I prepared a microscope slide of sludge water.


 In preparing this sample, I was careful to lift each side of the coverslip up slightly with double-sided tape. I did this so that I wouldn’t inadvertently squish anything alive in the sludge. I swirled my dropper around in the mud, making sure to get an especially gross and chunky sample. Then I began to observe.


 At first I thought I saw some movement, but after further observation realized that it was just bits of plant matter moving around in the water. I stared at the sample to no avail — no microorganisms revealed themselves to me.


 Our professor mentioned that she got the sample during high tide, which could be a reason why I did not see any creatures. It’s also possible that the creatures were hiding out in the mossy chunks and I was unable to see them. Whatever the reason, I hope I get a chance to observe some more mud soon to try again.

Nikki Wang

Earth

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Loves Me, Loves Me Not… Bio60_2019

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