Experimental Soft Condensed Matter Group
Harvard University, Prof. D. A. Weitz

Optical Microscope Facility

In ESL, we have an inverted microscope (ESL 205c), an inverted fluorescence microscope (ESL 214) and an upright fluorescence microscope (ESL 214) with 2 cameras (one grayscale and one color) and computers available to capture images taken. In McKay 517, we have an inverted fluorescence microscope with a grayscale camera and a computer availabe. The capabilities of these facilities are:

Upright Microscope

Bright Field Microscopy
magnifications from 1.6x to 150x. Look here for more information on objective information
High-speed imaging
- Phantom V5, V7, V9 and Photron cameras
- for more detailed info, go to the weitzlab fastcamera web site
Hamamatsu ORCA ER Digital Camera

Effective no. of pixels 1344 x 1024
8.35 Hz capture rate at full frame
for more detailed info, go to the Hamamatsu web site
Make sure to use 8 byte depth if you want to do image processing on your files.

Inverted Microscope

Fluorescence Microscopy
Bright Field Microscopy,
Differential Interference Contrast (DIC)
magnifications from 1.6x to 150x. Look here for more information on objective information
High-speed imaging
- Phantom V5, V7, V9 and Photron cameras
- for more detailed info, go to the weitzlab fastcamera web site
Hamamatsu ORCA ER Digital Camera

Effective no. of pixels 1344 x 1024
8.35 Hz capture rate at full frame
for more detailed info, go to the Hamamatsu web site
Make sure to use 8 byte depth if you want to do image processing on your files.

Data Collection

.avi or .tif files- use either the ORCA to save movies or images directly onto our 140 GB hard drive. Files are large- 100 seconds of video is about 1 GB of data. You gain a lot of resolution by saving directly in digital format, but you need to get data off hard drive in a timely fashion! Make sure to use 8 byte depth if you are using the ORCA!

Data Analysis

Once you have 3D tiff stacks of data, we mostly use idl to process these images and extract interesting information (particle centers, cracking front) from the data.
Click here for the particle tracking tutorial.

Schedule
Email or call me if you'd like to start scheduling time on the microscopes!

If you have questions or would like more information, please contact Anderson Shum .

This page is maintained by:
Anderson Shum
Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (HSEAS)
Harvard University
40 Oxford St., Engineering Sciences Lab, Room 202
Cambridge MA 02138
617-495-1958
shum@fas.harvard.edu.