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The FoldscopeSlide Maker Kit is designed to go hand in hand with any Foldscope kit we offer. This kit includes a slide box capable of holding 20 glass slides as well as cover slips, tweezers, a small pipette, and 3 specimen tubes. Making it possible for you to make slides anywhere you take your Foldscope!
Glass slides. The slide is the base on which you place your sample. Your sample must then be held in place with a clear sticker, glass coverslip, or other adhesive. To reuse a glass slide, simply remove your sample along with anything you used to mount it and wash carefully with soap and water.
Glass coverslips.Glass coverslips provide the best image while protecting your sample, but they are very fragile. Be very careful when removing and placing them. If you’re using a ring sticker, you can simply use a glass coverslip to seal the ring instead of the clear plastic cover on the sticker. You can also use a glass coverslip without a ring sticker by simply placing your sample on the slide and then gently placing a glass coverslip on top. This technique works best for samples that are very thin and at least slightly moist, as that allows a seal to form between the slide, sample, and coverslip. Good samples for this method include:
Clear stickers. Clear stickers are the easiest way to mount a sample. Although they are particularly useful for paper slides, clear stickers can also be helpful in situations where the stickiness allows you to capture your sample and trap it in place. This might include:
Ring stickers. Ring stickers are helpful for protecting bulky or fragile samples-- they act as spacers so that your sample doesn’t get squished by the coverslip. They also create wells to contain water samples. To use a ring sticker, peel one off the backing and stick it in the center of a blank slide. Peel off the sticker’s transparent plastic cover, then place your sample in the center of the ring. Cover your sample by sticking either the peel-off coverslip or a glass coverslip over the top of the ring. If one of our thin ring stickers is too shallow, try one of our new 3x thickness rings instead for more depth! Samples that you might want to mount with a ring sticker include:
Sample collection tubes. These tubes are useful for collecting and storing liquid samples. You can also use them to store stains with the rest of your slide-making kit.
Tweezers.Tweezers allow you to grab small portions of samples such as moss, algae, and soil. Once you’ve placed your sample on a slide, tweezers are very handy for spreading it into a thin layer so that your sample allows light to pass through and is not too crowded to see individual details.
Pipette.A pipette is helpful for collecting and mounting water samples. When mounting a water sample, first place a ring sticker in the center of your slide and remove its cover. Then use the pipette to place a very small drop of water in the center of the ring-- there should be so little water that it’s not even touching the sides of the ring sticker. Then carefully place either the transparent ring sticker cover or a glass coverslip over the ring, starting from one edge and then gently tilting it down.
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