Student in the Lab: Oh My Gauze

Photography by Jamie Knaub, doctoral candidate,
Charles E. Schmidt College of Science

The various equipment at the FAU High School Owls Imaging Lab plays an important role not only in the collection of scientific data, but also in demonstrating to our students the different types of magnification. Every year we teach students about magnifiers and showcase items under different levels of magnification. Samples with small or microscopic features and texture are great for this purpose because it may be difficult to see with the naked eye but a microscope highlights structure that we would never guess was present otherwise. This image features a scanning electron microscope (SEM) image of medical gauze. With the naked eye, the individual fibers are hard to see, but with the SEM it’s easy to spot the weave pattern. Imaging was performed by using a JEOL Neoscope 6000 Plus scanning electron microscope at FAU High School Owls Imaging Lab.
Mentor: Marianne Porter, Ph.D., associate professor, Charles E. Schmidt College of Science