Microscope slide
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A microscope slide is a thin flat piece of glass, used to hold objects for examination under a microscope.
Microscope slides are often used together with a cover slip or cover glass, a smaller and thinner sheet of glass that is placed over the specimen.
Contents
General
Microscope slide is a rectangular flat piece of glass, typically 75 by 26 mm (3 by 1 inches) and about 1 mm thick. Microscope slides are usually made of optical quality glass, such as soda lime glass or borosilicate glass, but specialty plastics are also used. Fused quartz slides are often used when ultraviolet transparency is important, e.g. in fluorescence microscopy.
Availability
Microscope slides can be bought from lab suppliers and online. They are sold as packs of 50 or 100.
DIY microscope slide
Carefully cutting flat planes of glass into rectangular pieces will give you cheap microscope slides. However, since they're very cheap and you can get a large number of them for a reasonable price, it's cheaper to just buy them.
Projects
- See samples at microscope
