Observing the alveoli in a slice of rat lung. Initially we were given an incredibly thin slice of a rats lung (a cross section of no more then 1mm thickness). This was stained a pinky purple colour so we could see it with a bit more contrast. We set the microscope up like in the picture but we had the eye piece set to 10x and the zoom of the actual microscope set to 4x. This gave us an overall magnification of 40x. At this zoom we could only see large indistinguishable purple / pink clusters. These were presumably clumps of alveoli as we could not see seperate shapes. When we zoomed in further we could see, like in the picture with a small bit of light, a detailed expanse of discernible shapes. What we saw were small globular shapes that had lots of different folds. This is indicative of alveoli as they have a very large surface area as well. I enjoyed seeing them in person as we don't fully appreciate how specialised and just how many alveoli there are. From one of my pictures we can see that there is a small ruler. It will attempt to measure the size of one alveoli from it.
I have taken the picture with the ruler, cropped, straightened it and highlighted and annotated the alveoli I will be measuring. If we take the pictures size of the alveoli to be from 3.8 to 6.1 this would give us a reading of 2.3 . This was on a 400x times magnifcation.
As we learnt in class the equation for microcope work is
Magnification = measured size / actual size
So for this equation we know the measured size and the magnification so we rewrite the equation for actual size
Actual size = measured size / magnifcation
Magnification is 400x
Measured size is 2.3 micro meters
2.3 / 400 = 5.75x10^-3 micro meters
Although I could not find a true value to compare it to, this is a smaller value then a human alveoli which is what we would expect.
As we learnt in class the equation for microcope work is
Magnification = measured size / actual size
So for this equation we know the measured size and the magnification so we rewrite the equation for actual size
Actual size = measured size / magnifcation
Magnification is 400x
Measured size is 2.3 micro meters
2.3 / 400 = 5.75x10^-3 micro meters
Although I could not find a true value to compare it to, this is a smaller value then a human alveoli which is what we would expect.