We can do lots of cool things. Our facility is always upgrading
(shopping), and our capabilities currently include:
- Confocal microscopy:
- Regular, brightfield microscopy:
Magnifications from 1.6x to 160x. (The best resolution we can
get is 0.2 microns.) See table below for more information on our
lenses. We have both inverted and upright microscopes.
We also have a rotation stage: we can rotate the sample
in a horizontal plane while we're looking at it.
- Differential interference
contrast (DIC) microscopy:
This technique is
useful for
looking at thin samples, or samples with low contrast.
- Fluorescence microscopy:
Biologists love
this, as they have
all sorts of clever ways to make odd things
fluoresce.
Physicists (like us) like using boring old fluorescent particles.
(See our links page for sources of
these particles.)
- Temperature control:
We have a
temperature control
system for the microscope, which works
from room temperature up to about 40 degrees C. We also have a
water bath which can be used to control temperatures.
- High speed camera:
We have a Phantom V9.1 camera with 6 GB of memory. This is a
12-bit camera capable of 1632x1200 pixels at 1016 frames per
second, and 96x8 pixels at 153,846 frames per second, as well as
other ranges in between.
- Langmuir trough:
We have a Kibron Langmuir trough.
- Pipette puller:
We have a pipette puller and a microforge, suitable for making
glass pipettes with tip sizes down to a few microns.
- Digitizing video tapes:
More than
just microscopy, we also have a nice system for digitizing
video tapes. We can also digitize video signals straight from the
camera.
- Online frame-grabbing:
We can store video images directly onto hard disk at video rate
without losing any images. The files are big (one minute of
data fills a CD - 650 MB!) but we have
CD and DVD burners too.
- Analysis:
We use IDL to analyze our images.
We have several Linux computers to do this with.
-
Particle
tracking:
Our favorite analysis technique is
tracking the motion of individual colloidal particles. Best
of all, we can do this for several thousand particles
simultaneously, in three dimensions.
- Particle synthesis:
We have started making fluorescent colloidal PMMA, but the last batch we made was back in 2011. We still have the capability, in theory.
- Miscellaneous Gadgets:
These include a refractometer, several viscometers, and several
simple cameras. We also have a nice Hamamatsu video enhancement box which works well with video signals but which is a bit outdated now that most cameras go straight to the computer via a USB cable.
|
