Monday, October 5, 2009

Microscope Project: salt and sugar

For this activity you will need some items found in the kitchen. Gather some table salt, sugar (try sugar in the raw as well as refined white sugar), pepper and any other colorful spices. You may even want to gather a few oats or dried beans such as lentils or black beans to look at.

You may also want to look at some breakfast cereal flakes. Try a few different shapes and sizes.

You will need a low power (stereo) microscope such as the National Optical 446TBL microscope shown below.
Start with the smaller granular items. Turn on the light beneath the stage and sprinkle just a few pieces of sugar on the stage. Start out at 10x magnification and then move up higher to 30x magnification. How do the grains of salt differ from the granules of sugar?

Draw a few images of the differences between the salt and the sugar.