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I regularly exfoliate my face- and have always wondered what my dead skin cells would look like under a microscope. I scraped some fresh cells off the surface of my facial razor and prepared a sample using a cover glass and some tape- the cells adhered to the glass pretty well so adding a drop of water wasn’t necessary. I thought the images were pretty interesting- I wasn’t sure what to expect but was surprised to see a rather variable pattern of intersecting lines and random black blobs. Interestingly, the color also seemed inconsistent across the sample in some of the photos, which I also hadn’t expected because I was sure to collect the sample from a very small surface area to ensure homogeneity (naturally, some spots ought to be darker than others, but my expectation was that this would only be evident if I had collected samples from different areas of my face, or a single one from a bigger area). The edges of the sample in the pictures below were also quite dissimilar; the ones in the second photo are smooth, whereas those in the third have folds and creases. Not sure why that is, but I’m guessing uneven hydration could be a contributing factor.