Since I looked at plants for my last Foldscope post, I decided to look at the skin of various fruits for my second post. I took a strawberry, blueberries, and honeydew from my dining hall, but I am focusing on the blueberries because they had the most clear and interesting results.

To prepare the slide, I used tweezers to remove the skin from a blueberry, being careful not to get any of the fleshy fruit with it. I placed each piece of skin on the slide without overlap. I did not add any water because the skin was already moist. Then, I looked through my Foldscope at the highest magnification.

The image is not as clear as I would like, so I would probably be able to see more if I could look with a higher magnification level. However, you are still able to see patches of different coloration and some groups of what seem to be individual cells. I didn’t expect to see such a mix of colors, especially not the bright pink!

I am also attaching a picture I took of the strawberry skin below. It is much less clear than the blueberry picture and you cannot see much cell-definition, but there are still some interesting color patterns. I used the same technique as the blueberry to prepare my slides, but it was much more difficult to avoid the fleshy fruit with the strawberry. This could be a reason why the picture is so unclear.