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January 17, 2005 Vol. 76,
no. 1S
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| FOCUS FOCUS FOCUS: Laleh
Jalilian, a senior BioE student, tests the Powell & Lealand
Compound Microscope. The work is part of an optics class assignment
to determine the microscope's functionality for the first time
ever. |
More than
meets the eye - Optics students investigate Berkeley's historical
microscopes
In the 1830s, a Parisian
optician named Charles Chevalier built a horizontal brass microscope
using multiple lenses. The model produced a higher magnification power
than earlier models and advanced microscope design. Chevalier christened
his striking new instrument the Chevalier Universal Microscope and built
more.
In the 1960s, Cal alumnus Orville Golub (Ph.D. '44 Bacteriology)
acquired one of the Chevaliers and in 1995 donated it to his alma mater,
where it was lovingly displayed in the east foyer of the Valley Life
Sciences Building with his 44 other historical microscopes. But no one
knew if the Chevalier or the other instruments in the Golub Collection
still worked.
This past fall, eight teams of undergraduate bioengineering students
took history - the Chevalier, the Henry Pyefinch, the Powell &
Lealand Compound, and the Leitz Compound microscopes - off the
proverbial shelf.
The BioE 164 Optics and Microscopy class wore gloves and a mantle of
Compound, and the Leitz Compound microscopes - off the proverbial
shelf.
The BioE 164 Optics and Microscopy class wore gloves and a mantle of
responsibility as it analyzed, for the first time, the working condition
of the four historical microscopes. The purpose was not only to determine
functionality, but also to analyze design, collect magnified images,
and learn about the physics of optics and the history of instrumentation.
BioE assistant professor Dan Fletcher hatched the idea after several
discussions with Steve Ruzin (Ph.D. '84 Botany), the collection's
curator. "We were talking about how these microscopes worked and
one thing led to another," Fletcher said.
On the last day of class, students presented their findings to Ruzin
and a standing-room-only audience of classmates, faculty and visitors.
"You are the only ones who've touched the microscopes,"
Ruzin told the students. "I have such confidence in engineering
students. I wouldn't let a biologist touch them," he joked.
The teams found that all four microscopes still worked, but at different
levels. For the Chevalier microscope, the team presenter said, "It's
like a transformer: 'More than meets the eye,'" which
won a few giggles for reference to the 1980s action figure.
In the end, the forebear of the modern microscope, the 1905 Leitz Compound,
produced the best magnification results. It also had little to no chromatic
aberration, a problem that confounded earlier designers.
BioE senior Rohan Desai, who was on one of the two teams studying the
Leitz, says the microscope project helped him understand the instrument,
which is important because, "We use microscopes all the time as
BioE students," he added.
Anuj Patel, a BioE junior, also found the exercise useful. "I learned
how [scientists] approached the development of microscopes, how they
solved problems. I feel like I could almost build a microscope myself."See
results of the BioE 164 analysis at http://golubcollection.berkeley.edu/.
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