Artefacts

• What do artefacts do?

  get in the way of your observations
• what are artefacts?

  things that you can see down the microscope that are not part of the cell or specimen that you are looking at
• what can artefacts be?

  • bits of dust
  • air bubbles
  • fingerprints
  • inaccuracies caused by squashing and staining your samples
• When are artefacts usually made?

  During the preparation of your slides
• How does one avoid creating artefacts?

  preparing root tips carefully
• Where are artefacts especially common?

  in electron micrographs
• why are artefacts especially common in electron micrographs?

  because specimens need lots of preparation before you can view them under an electron microscope.
• The first scientists to use electron micrographs could only distinguish between artefacts and organelles by repeatedly preparing specimens in different ways

  • If an object could be seen with one preparation technique, but not another, it was more likely to be an artefact than an organelle