Microscopes and Biological Diagrams

Microscopes and Biological Diagrams

Year 7

​What we will learn...

• ​How to use the school microscopes

• ​How to draw biological diagrams

• ​How to use our knowledge of organelles to do the above

​Overview of the light microscope:

• ​Look through the eyepiece that gives us 10x mag

• ​You can revolve through the objective lenses, to get 4x, 10x, and 40x mag

• ​You must start at the lowest

• ​The stage and stage clip hold the glass slide with the specimen

• ​Use the coarse focus to move the stage, and the fine focus to make smaller focus adjustments

​Method:

1. ​Turn on microscope

2. ​Place your slide on the stage, and centre it

3. ​Start on the lowest mag (4x objective lens)

4. ​Use the coarse focus to find the image

5. ​Then use the fine focus to achieve focus

6. ​Move to the next objective lens (10x)

7. ​Repeat step 5

8. ​Repeat steps 6-7 with the highest objective lens (40x)

9. ​Move the stage down, turn back to the 4x lens, take out specimen, turn off microscope.

​Making Slides + Stains

• ​When we make glass slides pf specimens, we nearly always use stains to make sure we can see the details of the cell

• ​We make slides by taking an extremely thin layer of the specimen and placing it on a slide, then putting a drop of stain on top, then placing another smaller piece of glass (coverslip) over the top

​Biological Diagrams

• ​Similar to a scientific diagram! Simple, yet effective.

• ​No shading/colouring

• ​Drawn in sharp pencil

• ​Labelled with a title, parts of the cell, and the magnification

• ​Do not have to draw every single cell (especially if there are many), just pick a representative view of the microscope image

​What's wrong with this biological drawing?

​

​What do we often get you to draw?

• ​Cell wall and membrane

• ​Nucleus

• ​Cytoplasm

• ​Plant vacuoles

• ​

• ​Sometimes:

• ​Chloroplasts

• ​Mitochondria

Poll

How confident are you feeling about this new topic? 

• Very confident! 

• Somewhat confident

• Average

• Not confident