When I was in Shrewsbury in the local high school "mentor" program run by
Sandy Mayrand at WFEB, I made a miniphototaxis chamber by rigging up a
couple of batteries and two type 222 light bulbs and an on/off switch and
polarity changing switch so I could drive Chlamys wild swimming back and
forth on slides. It's very easy to do; just hot-glue the bulbs to either
end of a standard microscope slide and solder the wires directly to the
bulbs (not in that order!) and arrange the wiring so that you could
direct three volts to either bulb, and of course turn it off. Then
get a red filter to cover the field stop on the scope, and cover the
microscope with heavy black bags to block out all light except of course
what the battery-pwoered lamps produce. The cells swim in a thick
preparation with coverslip standoffs so they have room to swim and can
get plenty of light. All of about 1/2hr effort. It works
amazingly well and the kids get a kick out of it. I use it here in Alabama
as part of the "Science Olympiad" program that draws high schoolers into the
university to take a sort of intellectual marathon of lab exercises and
projects, etc. It works well in that atmosphere too ("what are the cells
doing?' Do they change behavior as you progressively give them more light
stimuli; what happens if you pulse the light; try to cover the lamps
with different filters", etc, etc.)
Tony Moss
Auburn University
On 20 Jun 1994 chlamy at acpub.duke.edu wrote:
> Bill Snell is interested in experiments that can be done with Chlamydomonas
> in a high school laboratory (low budget, minimal equipment, no
> health/safety hazards). I've offered to compile as many ideas as people
> can come up with, and put them on the gopher server. Any suggestions? I
> enclose part of Bill's letter to me:
>> >I have a high school biology teacher/football coach working in my lab this
> >summer. We've talked about possible ways to incorporate Chlamy into his
> >classroom. Do you have any suggestions
> >about exercises for high school students. Also, do you know of a way to stain
> >cells so that their flagella can be seen in a bright field microscope. Our teacher tells me that he thinks most high schools will not have a phase
> >contrast microscope. We might be able to see them with iodine, but because
> >iodine can sublimate, I'm not sure it would be a good idea to have it sitting
> >around a high school lab. Any suggestions or ideas from you will be welcomed.
>> Elizabeth Harris
>chlamy at acpub.duke.edu>>>
