Fiber optic well slide

[beetleman]

Was just thinking of getting some side light in a well slide and came up with this thought. a clear lucite slide imbedded with fiberoptic rods. With the light source placed on the side of the slide, the fibers would pipe the light right into the well, lighting the little creatures Perpendicular to the regular microscope light source. I know you guys have a word for that kind of lighting When the well is polished clear the rods would get polished also. Would it be of any use????
(sorry for the crude picture, I am not a 3D artist)

[rjlittlefield]

Interesting idea, Doug. Thinking out loud for a moment...

There's a related technique used for lots of displays and signs. Take a polished sheet of plastic and shine light into an edge of it. The light propagates inside the sheet, bouncing off the shiny faces ("total internal reflection"), until it encounters some spot where the plastic is roughened and the light can get out. Voila! That spot lights up. It's pretty inefficient in terms of light pumped in versus light popped out, but it can give effects that are hard to get any other way.

In terms of your diagram, I'm not sure that the fibers are even needed. It might work as well to just use a uniform hunk of lucite.

On the other hand, one could shine the light down from above, and/or beam it up from below using a traditional darkfield condenser or regular condenser with a darkfield stop. The up-from-below technique offers the advantage that only a slight deflection of the light is needed to make the subject visible.

What would be the advantages of this new technique versus those?

--Rik

[Charles Krebs]

Doug... I like the idea. Simple, and with some testing seems it could work well. You could maybe use the fiber light guides to provide some dimensionality to the light... ie: have four (or more) little pigtails entering the well at different angles, then illuminate the ones you want according to the direction of light you desire.

A year or two ago I came across a commercial product that is somewhat similar (but probably very expensive):
http://www.mvi-inc.com/darklite.htm

[beetleman]

I just thought it would be interesting to throw this around to see what would come up. I can see where the lucite would act like a light pipe. What if the slide was painted black with clear ports in different locations and you use your gooseneck lights to illuminate the slide. It sorta takes a little time to set up your darkfield setup, this would be a little faster. Would it act the same as darkfield?

[rjlittlefield]

A year or two ago I came across a commercial product that is somewhat similar (but probably very expensive):
http://www.mvi-inc.com/darklite.htm

Charlie, someday I'd like to see your "card file". It's got quite a collection of unusual stuff, and I'd like to know how you keep track of it all!

Would it act the same as darkfield?

Who knows? I'm always getting surprised by what various setups do!

--Rik