[extropy-chat] Resources for microscopes

[Brent Neal]

 (4/2/06 13:23) kevinfreels.com <kevin at kevinfreels.com> wrote:

>My daughters and I want to get some petri dishes and collect samples from what is flying around in the air in the house and see if 
>there is mold and other such things. We plan to collect samples in some kind of medium in the dishes and culture it so we can get 
>decent samples for microscopes. Then we would like to look at it in the microscope and find out what we have. It should be a fun 
>experiment for us all. 
>Does anyone know what kinds of media I should use for collecting and culturing the samples? Or, does anyone know of a website 
>resource for comparing samples with photographs?  Our main concern is that we have Strachybotrys running around, but others may 
>be present as well. 


Agar is a good all-around medium for growing bacteria and fungi. It is common, cheap, and you can (or at least, you used to be able to) buy dishes from school supply stores with an agar/sugar medium already prepared. There are other more specialized media, that you will spend more (a lot more) for them, and I'm pretty sure you don't need anything that specialized.

Typically, you can inoculate a dish by leaving it uncovered to pick up ambient dust, or by using a tightly wrapped cotton swab to culture a particular surface.  If you wanted to be cool and technical, pick up an inoculation loop when you buy your dishes. Its relatively cheap, but IMO, superfluous for what you're trying to do.

I don't know any website resource, but you might want to try the Ask-A-Microscopist resource of the Microscopy Society of America.  <http://microscopy.com/Ask-A-Microscopist/Ask-A-Microscopist.html>  The messages get forwarded to the Microscopy-L listserver, and there are plenty of microbiologists there. I'm just not one of them :) 

Brent
-- 
Brent Neal
Geek of all Trades
http://brentn.freeshell.org

"Specialization is for insects" -- Robert A. Heinlein