Posted by
Steve Ruzin on
Mar 28, 2009; 4:01am
URL: http://confocal-microscopy-list.275.s1.nabble.com/Oil-in-a-10x-objective-tp2545827p2547960.html
>Couldn't resist adding this story -
>
>Years ago, a student from another lab wanted to use our inverted microscope
>to image cells. It was all explained carefully, that day she looked at her
>slides under supervision, seemed to be doing all correctly. My PhD student
>watched her in her next session the next day, all seemed fine.
>
>Then she worked for the next 2-3 days on her material, finally saying she
>was having problems imaging her cells, though it had been good at the start.
>Had a look down the scope, horrible image indeed, because.... Instead of
>using the 100x oil, she had (for unknown reasons) been using the 10x dry
>objective, but trying to use it with oil. Since the images were so poor,
>and she had a hard time getting the oil to touch the coverslip, she kept
>adding more and more oil, so apart from the objective being covered, there
>was oil down in the nosepiece, everywhere. And there was the broken end of
>a glass pipette sitting in the concave tip of the objective, despite being
>trained to only use the plastic pipettes, and despite there being no glass
>pipettes in the room - she'd brought in her own, preferring them to
>plastic!!
>
>After cleaning, objective was unharmed, nosepiece clean, but it taught me a
>lesson about keeping a close eye on novices! And the student? After
>finishing her Hons degree, didn't go on in science....
>
Well, that's a possibility here. While the condenser is often oily,
last week it was positively soaked. It's possible that I have a
repeat of your problem in my lab.
Steve...
--
____________________________________________________________________________
Steven E. Ruzin, Ph.D.
Director, Biological Imaging Facility
381 Koshland Hall College of Natural Resources
University of California Berkeley CA 94720-3102
510-642-6602 510-642-4995
(fax)
http://microscopy.berkeley.edu