MITOSIS: Multiplication by Division

Our body contains trillions of cells (thousands of millions) but everything started from a single cell. This unit cell has the amazing ability of dividing into two, and then four, and then eight and so on, in time becoming a complete organism. The process through which cells divide and divide as to multiply in number and become a complete organism, is known as Mitosis.

During Mitosis, the parent cell divides to form two genetically identical daughter cells. In order to assure a perfect copy of the genetic material in the daughter cells, the parent cell has to duplicate the chromosomes first; this step is called the

Feulgen stain, still indispensable for microscopic research

Robert Feulgen (1884–1955) was a German physician and chemist who, in 1914, developed a method for staining DNA (now known as the Feulgen stain) and who discovered that DNA is located in the chromosomes and also discovered plant and animal nuclear DNA ("thymonucleic acid") congeniality. 

Painting with crystals

Preparing a normal or time lapse video of a crystallization process under the microscope is not easy. Focusing problems, formation of too big crystals and getting the interesting part right under the objective, often gives you a headache.

With the technique described below, most of these headaches can be overcome:

Finding the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow

This is a photo of a chalcedony interacting with white Tungsten light. It is special because it almost shows all the colours of a rainbow. To do so, the crystal needs to have the exact geometry and to be placed at the exact position to interfere with each of the colours separately.

Ants, the world’s barely visible largest biomass

Ants are a group of colony-forming social insects, which belong to the order of Hymenoptera. Ants have been able to adapt to very different habitats; where they occur, ants are the dominant life form on the bottom. It is estimated that the total biomass of ants is greater than that of any other animal species on earth.

Just stones?

Tumbled stones are small pieces of rocks and minerals (usually about one to five centimeters in diameter) that have been processed in a rock tumbler to produce smooth, rounded and highly polished pebbles. Most stones that a person can find will not tumble with good results. The rocks and minerals used to make tumbled stones are specially selected for their color, translucence, appearance and ability to

Azure ingots for Christmas

This picture will be very familiar to many, as it shows some distinctive crystals of copper sulphate. They are known due to their very characteristic deep blue colour and their oblique rectangular formations.

No sweat

Sweat glands are located all over the body in the skin. In some places they are relatively common. Thus one finds about 300 sweat glands in 1 cm² of the skin of the palm, and on the back only 50. They are located in the lower layer of the dermis.

Polarization Contrast - Coloring your sample

Polarization Contrast is an affordable and easy contrast method to detect birefringence, which is a material characteristic that can be found in minerals, crystals, plastic foils, fibres, but also in botanical and biomedical samples.

Birefringence is based on the crystal structure of the material, or on the organized pattern of macromolecules within an amorphous matrix.

Living apart together

Volvox Aureus is a Chlorophyte, or green alga. It exists as a grand spherical colony. Each little alga within the colony bears two flagella, whip-like hairs. The individual algae are connected to each other by thin strands of cytoplasm that enable the whole colony to swim in a coordinated fashion. The individual algae also have small red eye spots.