Peter Washington

#BioE301C
 


 We took a hair follicle and were able to observe the root, its dermal papilla, as well as the cuticle of the hair shaft. This hair follicle is average in thickness. Usually, a hair thicknesss between 0.06 and 0.08 mm is considered to be average while a diameter between 0.08 mm and 0.1 mm is considered to be thick. This hair follicle comes from Kasra, one of our team members who is not losing hair. By contrast, Peter (another team member) has much thinner hair and would likely not be detectable at this microscope resolution. However, we did not test this hypothesis because Peter is too self conscious about his thinning hair.

<figure class="wp-block-image">
 <img alt="Hair" class="wp-image-149027 gcloudimg" data-attachment-id="149027" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta='{"aperture":"1.8","credit":"","camera":"iPhone 7 Plus","caption":"","created_timestamp":"1557449539","copyright":"","focal_length":"3.99","iso":"20","shutter_speed":"0.0028328611898017","title":"","orientation":"1"}' data-image-title="Hair" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/microcosmosdelta.appspot.com/images/transfer_149023/Hair.jpg"/>
</figure>

 
 Calculation of Scale Bar
 


 The Foldscope was calibrated with a size scale in a manner similar to that described by our wonderful teaching assistant, Xinzhi Zou, in her Foldscope #BioE301C post from last year. In this approach, we draw two lines with a 1mm distance between them using a ruler. We take a picture of these two lines using the phone camera attached to the Foldscope. Finally, we appended a line going between these two lines at one-tenth of the length of the 1mm line, giving us a 100 micron scale bar.


 Marija Pavlovic (marijavp), Peter Washington (peter100), Kasra Naftchi-Ardebili (knaftchi)

Hair Follicle

#BioE301C


 Tap water from one of Stanford off-campus housing facilities was sampled. We did not observe any living creatures in the limit of the microscope magnification. The vesicle-like spheres are bubbles. We were incredible relieved to find that there are not observeable living organisms in tap water, at least with the resolution at which we were observing the tap water. This indicates that, at least on a cursory level, Stanford tap water seems to be safe to drink, although future work is required to confirm this hypothesis generated from our preliminary exploratory study.

<figure class="wp-block-image">
 <img alt="TapWater" class="wp-image-149040 gcloudimg" data-attachment-id="149040" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta='{"aperture":"1.8","credit":"","camera":"iPhone 7 Plus","caption":"","created_timestamp":"1557447980","copyright":"","focal_length":"3.99","iso":"20","shutter_speed":"0.0024038461538462","title":"","orientation":"1"}' data-image-title="TapWater" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/microcosmosdelta.appspot.com/images/transfer_149037/TapWater.jpg"/>
</figure>

 
 Calculation of Scale Bar
 


 The Foldscope was calibrated with a size scale in a manner similar to that described by our wonderful teaching assistant, Xinzhi Zou, in her Foldscope #BioE301C post from last year. In this approach, we draw two lines with a 1mm distance between them using a ruler. We take a picture of these two lines using the phone camera attached to the Foldscope. Finally, we appended a line going between these two lines at one-tenth of the length of the 1mm line to the image of interest, giving us a 100 micron scale bar.


 Marija Pavlovic (marijavp), Peter Washington (peter100), Kasra Naftchi-Ardebili (knaftchi)

Tap Water

#Bioe301C


 A thin layer of onion epidermis was laid out on a slide. The cell walls, cytoplasm, as well as the nuclei are observable in the image. Onions are food that are commonly consumed by humans. Onions are often found in pizza, hamburgers, onion rings, french onion soup, and some healthy food as well such as various types of salads. Onions are also often found nearby tears. It is interesting to observe the structure of the peel, which is quite segmented and has somewhat of a crispy texture. This matches the `crunchiness’ that is often experienced when consuming or peeling an onion.

<figure class="wp-block-image">
 <img alt="Onion" class="wp-image-149054 gcloudimg" data-attachment-id="149054" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta='{"aperture":"1.8","credit":"","camera":"iPhone 7 Plus","caption":"","created_timestamp":"1557443880","copyright":"","focal_length":"3.99","iso":"25","shutter_speed":"0.0083333333333333","title":"","orientation":"1"}' data-image-title="Onion" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/microcosmosdelta.appspot.com/images/transfer_149053/Onion.jpg"/>
</figure>

 
 Calculation of Scale Bar
 


 The Foldscope was calibrated with a size scale in a manner similar to that described by our wonderful teaching assistant, Xinzhi Zou, in her Foldscope #BioE301C post from last year. In this approach, we draw two lines with a 1mm distance between them using a ruler. We take a picture of these two lines using the phone camera attached to the Foldscope. Finally, we appended a line going between these two lines at one-tenth of the length of the 1mm line to the image of interest, giving us a 100 micron scale bar.


 Marija Pavlovic (marijavp), Peter Washington (peter100), Kasra Naftchi-Ardebili (knaftchi)

Peter Washington

Earth

Posts

Hair Follicle

Tap Water

Onion Peel

Locations

Statistics

Type of Sample

Foldscope Lens Magnification