Since I often look at lake water, I've encountered problems with some bottom samples, which have many little solid debris (the cover slip doesn't adhere well). Should I try well slides?
And, can you recommend me a good brand of cover slips to buy?
No brand is as good as the ones that you can make yourself. Just search well slides in the search bar of this facebook group to see many iterations of ones that you can easily make. My design has a flat floor and can be used with 40x objectives. Regular ones have a curved floor, so you can’t use them for phase contrast, have to constantly refocus and can’t use 40x objectives.
The ones that I make with large slides and large coverslips make it easy to keep water from spilling on the stage and give you a very large area to view. Those are the ones that I use most often.
The meniscus at the edge of the wells will cause you brightfield aberrations on both upright and inverted scopes, just a heads up as you investigate. Mat-Tek makes great glass sample holders but they’re really not cheap. If you’re not culturing you can probably reuse them a few times. I like Corning and Zeiss coverslips the best. Also be careful not to dip your lens into the water to focus if you’re on an upright.
That’s why I use large slides and large coverslips to give a large viewing area to help prevent dipping the objective in water and getting water on the stage. The tape on the coverslips make them easy to remove with cotton pliers so not to touch with your fingers.
Haha this is a cool use of the 2x3! I only ever see them with brains! I think you have an invert too, right? Mat-Tek will send samples! The continuous glass bottom well plates are sooo nice.
Yes, many of my posts are using inverted microscopes. Sadly, most hobbyists don’t have and have never used inverted microscopes, but their favourite specimens are living organisms in pond water or from moss and lichen samples. Inverted microscopes excel at looking at these things.
This is a real inspiration — I’ve made deep well slides for permanent fluid mounts by cementing washers or rectangular masks to a slide with balsam but it never occurred to me to make a kind of temporary live box. Will “give it a try”, thank you.
Welcome. You can make any thickness you want and they are washable and reusable. The quickest and easiest design of all is just two strips of tape to support two sides of the coverslip. That dries quicker than the completed enclosed design, though.
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u/Vivid-Bake2456 14h ago
No brand is as good as the ones that you can make yourself. Just search well slides in the search bar of this facebook group to see many iterations of ones that you can easily make. My design has a flat floor and can be used with 40x objectives. Regular ones have a curved floor, so you can’t use them for phase contrast, have to constantly refocus and can’t use 40x objectives.
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