Felipe Calero Forero

When I came to the U.S., I decided to bring some snacks with me from back home.


 When I got the foldscope, I decided to look at some raisins I had brought with more detail to see if I could lean anything interesting.


 To observe the raisin, I used tweezers to break the raisin apart, then picked up a small piece from the inside, and then smeared it onto the plate. Using the cover slip, I further spread out the sample, so it became more translucent. To take a picture, I used the light source from the kit and the camera on my Samsung S4.

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 <img alt="WhatsApp Image 2019-02-09 at 14.35.30" class="wp-image-125313 gcloudimg" data-attachment-id="125313" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta='{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}' data-image-title="WhatsApp Image 2019-02-09 at 14.35.30" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/microcosmosdelta.appspot.com/images/transfer_125312/WhatsApp-Image-2019-02-09-at-14.35.30.jpeg"/>
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 To my surprise, when I looked at the sample, it looked green, not magenta! The fact that green is the complementary color of magenta probably has something to do with this. Perhaps the raisin absorbs wavelengths of light associated with green, so when viewed normally, we see its complementary color, while when viewed with the foldscope, only light that can be absorbed and re-emitted on the other side can be seen.


 There were also a lot of circular shapes that appeared to be bubbles. Maybe these are pockets of air that were trapped when the sample was pressed against the plate. Reading online about raisins, I learned that it is possible for the sugars to crystallize, so perhaps some of the large shapes are sugar crystals.


 It would be interesting to compare these images to ones taken from grapes, to see if or how they differ.

[Bio60_2019] Colombian Raisins

I was curious to know if I could use the foldscope to learn something about how ants were, so I decided to look at them in more detail.


 I used a piece of tape to grab an ant that was on some plants that had been collected, and then used tweezers and scissors to break up the ant into its parts.


 To begin, I grabbed its head and placed it on a slide, then used the flat end of the tweezers to squeeze the head, which was surprisingly tough to do! After I managed to squish the head onto the plate, I added some water and then the cover slip, which helped flatten the sample even further. To observe the sample, I used the included light source and an iPhone 6 camera.

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 <img alt="52746941_254134285331364_9021043411804749824_n" class="wp-image-129482 gcloudimg" data-attachment-id="129482" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta='{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}' data-image-title="52746941_254134285331364_9021043411804749824_n" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/microcosmosdelta.appspot.com/images/transfer_129468/52746941_254134285331364_9021043411804749824_n-1.jpg"/>
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 I was happy to see the pincers and the eyes with more detail, although next time I would want to find a way to look at the inside of the head more closely.


 Next, I decided to look at the abdomen to check for anything interesting, and prepared the sample in the same way as the head.

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 <img alt="52605830_409613136454702_2100535467861606400_n" class="wp-image-129479 gcloudimg" data-attachment-id="129479" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta='{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}' data-image-title="52605830_409613136454702_2100535467861606400_n" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/microcosmosdelta.appspot.com/images/transfer_129468/52605830_409613136454702_2100535467861606400_n.jpg"/>
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 It was a little difficult to know what I was looking at in the abdomen, as I was not sure what the bubbles were.


 In the future, I think it would be interesting to look at the inside of ant without the chitin, and perhaps that could be accomplished by dissolving the chitin in some way, or using some fine tools to pull out the insides of the ant.

Felipe Calero Forero

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[Bio60_2019] Colombian Raisins

[Bio60_2019]Ant Head and Abdomen

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Foldscope Lens Magnification