PLANT ANATOMY LAB II

DIGITAL MICROSCOPY

Objectives

The saying, "a picture is worth a thousand words" certainly holds true in the field of plant anatomy.  One recent development in imaging technology is the Charge Couple Device (CCD), or solid state digital camera, which can be interfaced with various microscopes in much the same way as film cameras.  In this exercise you will become familiar with the operation of the Spot CCD  interfaced with a Nikon compound light microscope and a Pentium II computer that you will be using in subsequent exercises to capture images of plant material that you will be studying.  Take the time now to learn how to effectively use this tool as you will need this skill for completion of your electronic laboratory exercise sheets.

The Nikon compound light microscope can be configured to do:

1.  Bright Field Imaging

2.  Polarized Light Imaging

3.  Hoffman Contrast Enhancement Imaging

4.  Flourescent Imaging (NB.  If you intend to do Flourescent Imaging, You MUST SHUT THE COMPUTER COMPLETELY OFF before turning on the Mercury Lamp.  Failure to do this could result in destroying the circuitry of the computer!  The Mercury Lamp must be left on for a minimum of one half hour to prolong the lifetime of the filament.  Please remember to shut off the Mercury Lamp after you are done.)

Learn how to use these different types of microscopy so that you can take advantage of them in subsequent exercises.

General Description

Review the brief instruction on how to capture an  Image with the Spot CCD.

Later on you may wish to consult the more in depth users guide for the Spot CCD.

Exercises

1.  Capture three images of fresh Elodea leaves using the 4X, 10X, and 40X Objectives with the Spot CCD.  Make sure to save these images in JPG format.

2.  Store these images in your image subdirectory on your M drive.

3.  Complete the laboratory exercise sheet.

Materials