April 25th-Microscope

To focus an item in high power, you must start by focusing the object in the scanning objective, then the low power objective, before finally getting to the high power objective and focusing using the fine adjustment knob instead of the coarse adjustment knob. To make a wet mount slide, first put a thin piece of the specimen on the slide, then put one drop of water on top of it, followed by applying the cover slip at a 45 degree angle over the specimen in order to ensure there are no air bubbles. To correctly stain a slide, first put a drop of the stain on one edge of the cover slip covering a specimen, then put a piece of paper towel on the other side and capillary action should pull the stain under the cover slip to stain the specimen. In this lab, I learned how to properly focus a microscope on all of the different objectives and I now understand how to use the diaphragm to help see the specimens.