AWLC Laboratory
Sand/Silt Collection
One big interes in geology collection of amator people around the world is the Sand. Many ways to colect this item alredy are on internet like jars,test tubes,vaccine jars and more. To have one memmory of the vacantions or just from pur curiosity is verry good and make you have one large archive of your knolowge.
But... is one... most of youtube or internet archives teach you how to presearve and save rocks whit Geoform tehnic what is not in all houses. Today we will present one form of mounting in home whit low or zero cost and save space.
In geology is much work and patience exact like in biology laboratory. To cut the rocks for mounting on slides and the time to slip to the tiny nanomimmeters is hard for many. The sand is easy to save and study plus will be one nice addition of your home design. Always over the world beaches are many tipe of sands but home you need one big place or new furniture to acommodate your collection. We will present today one method simple and low cost tosave space and money whit your sand colection.
You need : microscope glass slides , clear nail polish, sand , microscope slides box or one shoe box.
Clean your microscope slides whit water and liquid soap ,dry the slide whit one cloth towell not papper ,strain your sand to the silt form for you will use just the fin part of the sand for your slide, put the clear nail polish on the slide in what form you whant to have your collection ,be generos whit your clear nail polish, sprinkle the silt over the nail polish and press little to go in nail polish , let one minute alone to dry little on air, turn on back side the glass slide for the excces of silt to go down from slide,put back up the slide and let dry cca 30 min. You will have one slide like this:
Do not put nail polish or mount medium over sand sample for will create many air bobbles what you cant take out. We do not recommand to put one cover glass over sample but if you whant use the large one and mount just on ages of cover glass not in . Put the slide after all is dry in the box whit the sample head up and store them on book shelfs.
Magnetic Sand/Silt
The sand what stay out from slide can be used whit all your sample to find magnetic parts of grain in your sand to create one new slide whit magnetic sand. To do that you mast use one magnet or 3-4 mini ones like in this picture:
After you pic up from your silt sample iron ore and magnetic cristals you mast repeat the procedure fron the first slide but now you will put on mounting medium the magnetic sand what you finded in your sample. The rest of your sand you can save in one yest petri dish 55 mm or jar.
Under one loupe or stereo microscope ( works biologic one too up to 400x )you can study the sample and see what kind of sand you have in your collection.
We hope to be one good advice and solution over your collection and keep the clean room like one real laboratory. If you mount the sand on glass slides ,you will need to put in your box one little black paper to use if your microscope do not have black side for samples.
Stay healty and wise!
