Observing plant & animal cells

Image A

What do animal cells look like under the microscope? What cell structures are visible? Image A shows a round cell with “softer looking” cell structures. The difference between plant and animal cells are the number of contents within the cells, the structure of the cell as a whole, and the arrangement/shape of the contents. There are several possible cell structures visible in the photos; ribosome, endoplastic reticulum, or the edge of the nucleus.

What do plant cells look like under the microscope? What cell structures are visible?Image B shows a round cell with not very many cell structures visible under the microscope. This was the result of improper methods while creating the slide. As a result, I am not able to identify complete cell structures.

Image B

How can you tell plant and animal cells apart if you can only see them under a microscope?                                                                                                                             Animal cell structures don’t look very “rigid,” because they don’t have a cell wall. Plant cell structure is the opposite, because they do have a cell wall. Animal cells rarely have vacuoles, if they do they are much smaller than what they would look like inside a plant cell.

We used methylene blue on the animal cell. Why was it important to treat animal cells with this compound? Why didn’t we use it on the plant cell? Methylene blue makes the cell structures much more visible. Specifically, it makes the nucleus more visible under the microscope. We did not use that substance on the plant cell because it is not made to test that substance. Using iodine would have been more effective because it is normally used to test plant cells.

What did you learn during this lab? I learned that a microscope is a useful, powerful tool when viewing plant cells. Even though I did not perform my part of the lab correctly, it was interesting to learn about the tool and view a cell on such a grand scale. I am curious, if there is a microscope that exists that can view a cell on a microscopic level in 3D, or holographically. . It sounds impossible to make, which is why I am interested in it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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