Eggses!

These are chicken eggs I bought from a local woman who raises free-range, grain-fed chickens. Notice that they are not uniformly white or brown. I didn't even get the most colorful dozen. Her hens lay eggs in many shades of pink, blue, green, brown, and white, and I would like to know why.

I suspect that the minerals in their feed and in the soil tint the shells. That is a pretty large hypothesis, though, so I should narrow it down. Are all of the chickens the same breed? From the same clutches? Are they all fed the same thing every day? What are they fed, and how much? Do they all spend the same time outside each day? What kinds of worms and grubs dwell in the soil? Do some chickens eat more worms and grubs than grain? As you can see, there are plenty of variables that need to be controlled in order to answer this question, and some of them might involve discomfort or inconvenience to the farmer or the chickens.

There is one non-invasive thing I can do though. I can save the shells, dry them out, crush them to powder, and burn a bit of the powder while observing the flame through a spectroscope.

Acute cat picture.

Shed cat claw, 40x, picked out of the carpeting after an "Oh, shit, ouch! Hmm, I wonder what that looks like under a microscope" experience.

Hair

Hair, feathers, scales, and quills are all modified epithelial cells. Let's take a look.

Human hair at 1600x

This is a human hair. Notice it has a slight scaliness to it. 

Eyelash 1600

Human eyelash at 1600. I couldn't find any indications that it was scaly, but it does have an odd dark line running through the center.

Eyelash 1600

Another view.

Eyelash 100

Human arm hair 1600

Cat hair 1600

This is a little difficult to make out, but cat hair shows the same scaliness as human hair.

Plankton net

My plankton net has shipped! It should be here by the first week of March.

My goal is to take weekly samples from Lake Sammamish and daily samples from Issaquah Creek, along with samples from other waterways I visit.

Money shots - $20 bill

This is the shiny ink on the 20 of the face of a Jackson.

The Eye of Jackson!

Oak leaves.

The security strip in a $20 bill. It contains the denomination of the bill, a tiny US flag, and fluoresces a different color in UV light depending on the denomination.

Money Shots - $10 bill

This is where things get interesting, and by interesting, I mean sparkly. As part of its effort to reduce counterfeits, the Bureau of Engraving & Printing introduced metallic ink on bills of $5  or higher.

This is part of the Treasury Seal.

This is the 10 on the lower right face of the bill showing the metallic ink. It changes color from green to gold to red depending on how the light hits it.

Back of the bill, some detail about the statue.

The peach shading on the back of the $10.

The red liberty torch on the front.

More detail of the US Treasury building.

Part of the background liberty torch on the front of the bill.

Money Shots - $1 bill

All photos are 40x unless noted otherwise.

Let's start with a $1 bill.


ETA: Information about how paper money is manufactured can be found at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.

This is the series date on the face of a $1.

Torn corner at 100x. Paper money is 75% cotton and 25% linen fibers, plus a lot of ink.

Eagle feathers on the back (green) side. Green ink is used for the main printing motif on the back of the bills, thus the name "greenbacks".

George Washington's eye.

The eye on the top of the pyramid.

Scrollwork

Stars over the eagle's head on the reverse side.

Part of the US Treasury seal.

More Treasury seal.

Crosshatching at the bill border.

Examples of posts (testing...is this thing on?)

Shiitake mushroom cap at 40x.

Cheek cells.

Salt crystal, reconstituted, 40x.

Under the microscope

This is where my micrograph stuff is going to go. I've recently invested in a plankton net and would like to do a series on the waterways around Issaquah, WA. We'll see how that goes.