Dog Hair Under The Microscope 🔬

This is GiGi, my brother’s dog, who had been staying over for just over a week. Before taking her home today, I stole she willingly gave me a strand of her hair. The strand was half black on top and white at the bottom. I snipped the strand into 3 pieces so they would fit within the cover slip size. Using the same nail polish I used when I made the oat grass permanent slide, I accidentally found a better way to get the slip to stick on better. Yippee!

First I brushed a thin small amount of clear nail polish onto the slide. Then I placed the snipped hair onto the nail polish. Because I was too lazy to find my hobby tweezers, I placed the last strand incorrectly. It ended up falling on top of the second piece, creating a cross. I tried to move it using a toothpick; however the nail polish was already starting to dry and become tacky. So I left it as it was.

From this, I realised if I leave the nail polish to dry a little with the specimen on top, it will make the nail polish tackier to adhere the cover-slip (with a dab of nail polish underneath) more quickly and flat.

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I thought I would test out the two eye pieces the microscope came with to see what the difference was at a higher magnification. I noticed the 16x eyepiece image using the 40x objective lens seemed a little grainy (top left image). When I switched to the 10x eyepiece, the image seemed a little clearer (bottom left image).

By closing the iris diaphragm about half way and turning up the light source, I was able to make the image more defined. Where details previously harder to see are now clearer. (see above two right photos and compare with the left images). The iris diaphragm controls the amount of light that reaches the specimen. However you would keep it open at the start and only close it if you need.

I was about to pack up but I thought I would check out the white part of the hair closer to the root. I am so glad I did because the root part was interesting. The root section was transparent so I adjusted the iris diaphragm to see more detail. I then noticed on the left side, you could see where the pigmentation started within the strand of hair. This was a pretty amazing find I must admit. This permanent slide is definitely staying in my collection.