MicroscopesBlog: Expert's reviews, news, notes on Microscopes, Centrifuges, Lab Coats, Pipettes, Lab Safety, & more Lab Products!

American and Dutch scientists under the supervision of professor of physics Philip Nelson, University of Pennsylvania, have been studying the fragments of the DNA, and recently they discovered that molecules of this natural polymer possess the huge flexibility. The scientists used the power-atomic microscope in their studies. It allows to measure exchange forces between the atoms of special probe, so called, nanoneedle and testing sample. Nanoneedles are made from the materials close to silicon. The needle shifts according to atomic interaction and reproduces the relief of the testing sample. These microscopic movements are registered by means of a laser. It's possible to study the form of the individual molecule and even move it with the help of the nanoneedle. The authors of this reseach used this possibility. They made the needle contact fragments of the DNA, which allowed them to measure exchange forces. Derived results don't correspond with the commonly used model, which describes physical characteristics of the DNA molecule comparing it with the rigid rubber plait.

When I think about microscopes I imagine the whole civilization, because nowadays microscopes are used almost in every sphere of human activity. You can't conduct a test or analysis without a microscope and it's also impossible to create modern microschemes without it. The microscope is necessary for the science and manufacture. Since the time when the very first microscope was invented, this device has endured huge improvements and unbelievable changes. And if you see the first microscope you would probably not recognize it, because it's form, size and quality have been changing yearly. There are many interesting books about the history of microscopes. Reading them you can plunge into the fascinating and exciting adventure of the microworld: see the first microscopes, learn the inventor of the first microscope, learn how to get lense, study the differences between compound microscopes and stereo microscopes and actually learn how to operate the microscope effectively. You can start your adventure right now, all you need is a MICROSCOPE!

I think that sweater is a universal winter clothing for men (as well as for some women). As you all know sweaters can vary in color, design, thinkness and warmness. I think that for winter purposes sweaters should be very soft and warm. So, the most popular, the warmest and the most expensive sweaters according to this criteria, are those which are made of wool. It has been the same way for a long period of time, but new technologies and progress effects even this matter. Now you can find sweaters made of polyester or 'poly' for short. Under the Stereo Microscope synthetic poly threads look more like hollow tubes, which are filled with air inside. This gives a sweater good heat-insulated effect and makes it very warm. There are 95 poly kinds, which differ only in technological nuances. But commoly there are 3 main kinds, which can hep you decide which sweater you need. 'Poly-100' – made of dense, but thin material. Clothes made of this material is active people, such as drivers, sportsmen, constructor, loader and other professions where much moving is envolved. 'Poly 200' is designed for less active people. It'll fit those who are to wait for a bus for a long time on the bus stops, go open market shopping or walk the dog. 'Poly 300' is ideal for fishermen, open market salespeople and for those who spend a lot of time outside. So, here, you are an expert now and can choose a sweater which is right for you and your life style.

I think that sweater is a universal winter clothing for men (as well as for some women). As you all know sweaters can vary in color, design, thinkness and warmness. I think that for winter purposes sweaters should be very soft and warm. So, the most popular, the warmest and the most expensive sweaters according to this criteria, are those which are made of wool. It has been the same way for a long period of time, but new technologies and progress effects even this matter. Now you can find sweaters made of polyester or 'poly' for short. Under the Stereo Microscope synthetic poly threads look more like hollow tubes, which are filled with air inside. This gives a sweater good heat-insulated effect and makes it very warm. There are 95 poly kinds, which differ only in technological nuances. But commoly there are 3 main kinds, which can hep you decide which sweater you need. 'Poly-100' – made of dense, but thin material. Clothes made of this material is active people, such as drivers, sportsmen, constructor, loader and other professions where much moving is envolved. 'Poly 200' is designed for less active people. It'll fit those who are to wait for a bus for a long time on the bus stops, go open market shopping or walk the dog. 'Poly 300' is ideal for fishermen, open market salespeople and for those who spend a lot of time outside. So, here, you are an expert now and can choose a sweater which is right for you and your life style.

Chinese artist (Ching Ing Chua) painted the smallest panda in the world. The image of panda bear is made on the human hair, and can be seen only with the help of a microscope at 50 thousand times magnification. A tiny rabbit’s hair was used as a brush, and it took the chinese painter about 10 days to complete the work. At the present time this picture is being displayed in one of the art galleries in Taiwan. There are world known micro-paintings, which are painted on the rise seed, pinhead and even on a poppy-seed. Usually a small hair is used instead of brush and it also can be sharpen in a special way.

Today I want to share with you the information about nanotechnology. I've been writing a report about it and decided that these newly released facts are very interesting. It's not only for the people of science, but for everyone. Damask sabers, made in tenth century, are well known by it's durability and sharpness. The studies conducted by Peter Paufer and his collegues from the Technical University in Dresden showed that even here we are talking about nanotechnologies. By means of a digital microscope professor Paufler made some pictures of the damask steel (which was made in India) and discovered that it contains carbonic structures, which resemble modern nanotubes. This discovery became possible only after a piece of steel was disslved in hydrochloric acid. This indian steel is made of iron with iron carbide dash, contained in the form of nanothreads. But it's not very clear how these nanothreads could be formed. Paufler suspects that the clue lies in these nanotubes, which were just recently discovered by scientists. At hight temperature some dashes produced growth of carbon in steel. And then these tubes, filled with iron carbide, formed the superfine threads. However, some scientists have doubts about this theory. If Paufler is wright, it means that people had been using nanotubes when producing steel in ancient times, though not knowing about it. In his further researches Paufler plans to apply the latest achievements in the field of carbonic nanostructures into restoring the lost technology of production the famous steel.

Earlier this year, at the end of September at the ATExpo held in Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, Chicago, which I attended due to my curiosity, the Norvegian company introduced it's newly released Aven Digital Camera Microscope . This Microscope has removable lenses, which are able to magnify the image up to 150 times. Creating this camera microscope the manufacturer directed it's attention not only toward amateur photographers, but also toward professionals, whose work conected with microphotography and filming. These digital microscopes are soon to be in the market, but it's approximate price is not yet known.

Have you ever tried to count all the seeds in a cucumber? I can proudly say that I did. When I was 5 years old I sincerely believed that I could do that, but at that timeI wasn't very experienced with numbers and failed. But, I didn't forget about my experiment and decided to fulfill my childhood mission one of these days.I've read several books on this topic and learned some interesting facts. Hope that someone will be interested in it. So, usually one fruit contains 120-150 seeds, and one cucumber plant has thousands of them, though only two or three pericarps have time to ripen. Cucumber's homeland is considered to be distant tropical jungles of India and China. In those countries the cucumber is being used for over 5000 years. Even residents of Ancient Rome and Greece were familiar with this product. Well, what is so attractive in a cucumber? I'd say that it's not only the taste, but the feeling of freshness, aroma and peculiar mellowness. From the Hippocrat times cucumber is considered to be one of the most curative fruits, though one of it's main components is water which comes to 97%. But this "cucumber" water had been filtered through the cucumber fibrous rootlet net, then passed the superfine vessels, which are visible only through a microscope. In other words, this water appeared as a result of a monumental natural "cookery". By the way, cucumber contains almost full set of vitamins, which are are very needed for the healthy life style. Besides that, cucumber holds calcium, potassium, magnesium, iron, phosphorus, silicon, iodine, albumen (protein), organic acid and specific enzymes, which structure is very close to the structure of insulin. Now I understand why in Ancient Greece this friut was pictured on the frescos in old sanctuaries and in Egypt it was portrayed on the sacrificial tables and was put into the tombs of the most famous pharaohs.

If I ask you "Do you know how sugar and salt look like?", you'd think that I'm insane, everyone knows how salt and sugar look like. We use them every day in our meals, we know how the taste and look. But what if I ask you another question: "Do you know how salt and sugar look under the microscope?" What would you say? Have you ever seen them so close? If not, then I'll be very happy to tell you. Take a grain of table salt and a grain of sugar and put both of them under the digital microscope and take a picture. On this picture you will see two types of crystals: bigger ones - decahedrons - this is sugar and round ones - this is salt. Natural sodium chloride crystals (this is exactly how chemists call our salt in "their language") have totally different cubic form. Rock salt consists of small crystalls grown together into one solid monolith. Besides salt crystalls we can see various contaminations there, such as other salt crysltals as well as foreign firm elements. For purification of this kind of salt chemists use method, which is called "backboiling". They dissolve the salt in the boiling water in order to get a saturated solution. When the process ends, there will be salt left on the bottom, which didn't dissolve. Then the solution needs to be separated from it's sediment and be cooled off. So, this white salt, which we got using this "backboiling" method has the right shape of crystals - cubic. The table salt on the contrary has round shaped crystals. It happens because after the backboiling process the salt was milled and cubic sides were obliterated. Sucrose crystalls, which we out of habit call sugar, have very interesting shape - two wide rectangular sides and each side is surrounded by four narrow inclined sides. In this way, the crystall consists of two truncated pyramids, connected at the base. Correlation between the crystall width and the size of big sides depends on the plant if was made from. Crystal form of beet sugar tends to be of a cubic form, cane-sugar crystalls have the shape of plates.

I hope that you love winter and enjoy snow the way I do. I have a very dear friend from Russia, whom I love. I was talking to her on the phone the other day and she told me this story about snowflakes. One day an american phytopathologist (specialist skilled in diseases of plants) was tuning his new electronic digital microscope in his laboratory. It was in December of 1993. Unfortunately for him he couldn't find any insect to test his recently bought device. He looked out of the window with the hope to find something suitable there, but only felt worse, hopeless. It was snowing outside. But then a bright idea occured to him to put the snowflake under the microscope. And he did that, but his first attempts failed.To study an object under a digital microscope you need to put it onto a conductive base. In our case the phytopathologist took a cuptic plate and cooled it to the temperature of -3 C. That was the exact temperature outside the window. But snowflakes refused to stick to the plate and flew away every time the phytopathologist wanted to look at them under a microscope. Then the scientist coated the plate with the solution of methylcellulose, adhesive inert substance, which doesn't freeze at faint frost. And the snowflakes sticked! After the immersion of the snowflakes into liquid nitrogen they became extremely firm. The stage of the microscope was also cooled to the very low temperature. That was the victory!!! And eventually he got the pics of the snowflakes!

I love reading interesting articles, so every day I'm getting news about world’s events and high tech discoveries. The news vary from political, cultural, economical, health, etc. Sometimes if I think that there is something interesting you would like to know, I'm telling it to you. Earlier this morning I read interesting acts about microscope. I'm sure that each of you knows that microscope is an optical instrument that augments the power of the eye to see small objects. The invention of this instrument brought so much light into today's world of medicine, that it's hard to discribe it's value...I'd say it's priceless.. But have you ever heard that microscope isn't only an instrument, but is also ....a.... CONSTELLATION. Did you ever know this? It was a big surprise for me when I read this. Anyway, miscroscope is a constellation, which is also known as Microscopium (Mic), it doesn't have bright stars, so you'll need to use a "microscope" to be able to see them. It was formed in 1752 by French astronomer Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille – explorer of the south night sky...

Usually to watch something very small scientists have to put this object under a stereoscopical microscope. But now the same scientists learned how to minimize a microscope to the size of a human cell. I watched the program about the new technologies in medicine, where I heard this news. Interdisciplinary group of scientists, supported by the Biotechnology and Biological Science Research Council and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, created optical biochip of a human cell size. This discovery can lead to the opportunity of a fast development of new drugs and more effective way of medical research and treatment. These chips could also result in building micro-laboratories of a credit card size. And these cards in turn could relieve patients from setting up appointments, going to the hospitals and wasting so much time. This research takes place in Wales College of Medicine together with researchers from Cardiff University, University of Bangor, Gray Cancer Institute in London, University of Warwick and scientific laboratories from United States of America. It seems to me that sooner or later our world will become one huge chip and people will become terminators…

Our world is becoming more and more crazy and unbelievable every day… I can’t explain it, but can only be impressed, amazed, startled, astonished, thunderstruck and astounded with all the news I hear… Like today, I heard the news about cell phone microscope…Yes, you won’t believe it…There is a modern tendency in our world for down sizing things… At the moment people are fed with regular size electronics. Now customers are willing to buy something exotic instead of useful… something that either no one or a restricted number of people have… That’s how was manufactured the smallest, tiniest and the most light cell phone in the world. And of course it’s not a secret that it was done by… Chinese manufacturer ….It’s so thin, small and light, and the display is so little, that you will hardly be able to see or read your text message without a microscope. This microscope is also relatively small and will be able to magnify the display by 15 times which appears to be a world record in this sphere… Well, lucky you in the nearest future will be able to have one of these…. Enjoy your day…