Blood, Microscopes, and Spider-Man
Seventh grade science class was the first time I got to play with microscopes. They were your old beat-up standard issue school microscopes with three lenses (but you could never use the highest power one because it was an oil immersion lens and what school could afford the oil?). We used the microscopes to view a variety of microscopic creatures such as volvox and paramecium. That was all fine and dandy, but I wanted something more — I wanted to see blood. Luckily, I had just had two teeth pulled (thank you, orthodontist), and figured I could get some blood from one of the sockets. Our teacher said I could give it a try, so I took a drop of blood, placed it on a microscope slide, put a cover slip on, slid it under a microscope, took a look — and I saw nothing. No cells, no platelets, nothing. I learned the hard way that looking at blood under a microscope simply isn’t that easy.
The slide needs to be specially prepared first. A blood smear is the easiest way to do this. A smear spreads out the blood in a very thin — nearly two-dimensional layer — so that each individual cell can be seen. Without the smear, there is just a thick pool of blood cells stacked on top of one another that’s all but impossible to interpret.
Once the blood smear is dry, it can be viewed under the microscope. This will give the basic idea of what’s going on, and most cells can be seen, but for a better view — the one we’re used to seeing in movies and television shows — the blood smear needs to be stained. This allows the various blood cells to stand out. Unfortunately, it’s also a labor intensive and time consuming process.
Why do I bring this up? Because of scenes like this, that routinely pop up in comics*:
If only it were that easy. I would’ve been a very happy seventh grader.
*And it’s not just comic books, it shows up in television shows and B-movies all the time as well. This issue of Ultimate Spider-Man (#125, Bendis and Immonen) was just the most recent example I ran across.
November 25th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
How about the willingness for seventh grade science teachers to allow for exposure of your blood to all of the other students. Were there masks involved, surgical gloves? Who was this horrible teacher endangering the safety of every other not so curious, fully toothed, non college bound students? I think we need to have an inquiry into your former schools practices…or better yet a witch hunt!!!
November 25th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
Good lord, there are asterisks in his blood.
November 25th, 2008 at 9:50 pm
I am one of those science teachers, but I work with high school life science courses. My AP kids do a smear and a Wright’s stain….it isn’t really that difficult, and they have a blast!
November 26th, 2008 at 10:07 am
Good lord, there are asterisks in his blood.
Radioactive asterisks!
November 26th, 2008 at 9:47 pm
No, no, not radioactive. This is Ultimate Spider-Man; he got bitten by a bioengineered/serum-exposed spider… no radiation at all. So untraditional.
November 28th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
@Brad:
Och, this was no doubt is in those halycon days before everyone got so scared of blood-borne diseases. When I was in elementary, and even later in middle school and high school, blood was treated less as a potential vector for diseases or even a biological contaminant, and more of a mess to be cleaned up. Frankly, I’m sure the diseases did exist back then, but the worry hadn’t been whipped to a fever pitch, at least not among the students (I came from a small town too, which may have influenced the lack of concern. I remember that the one teen pregnancy we had in middle school was a terrible scandal and an aberration).
February 22nd, 2010 at 3:57 pm
Not only should we complain about the comic, we should complain about the fact that your teacher did not seem to know what would happen (unless he just wanted you to learn on your own).
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