The Socolofsky Microscopy Center in the Department of Biological Sciences at LSU was proud to present the first ART AND THE MICROSCOPE exhibit for LSU Museums Day 2003!

The daily function of this laboratory is to produce research images for faculty and students at LSU using the sophisticated microscopy equipment in our lab. Several types of light microscopes as well as electron microscopes are used daily by scientists to photograph many sorts of samples. The data acquired by recording these images is important for communicating scientific observations about biology, chemistry, physics, and engineering, among other areas.

Another of our goals is to introduce teachers and young people to the excitement of observing and investigating objects with the use of microscopes. A wonderful grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute has provided for LSU's famous Scope-On-A-Rope Program, which was also featured in the exhibit.

Scope-On-A-Rope (or SOAR) is a high quality hand-held video microscope that instantly displays on a regular TV screen the real time magnified image of almost anything a participant chooses to observe. A special photo-quality printer can also "photograph" whatever TV image is chosen by the user. People from 5 to 85 years of age have instantly mastered this type of microscopy, and a number of visitors took advantage of the hands-on microscope at our exhibit. Graduate students Nadia Edwin from the Department of Chemistry and Matt Ducote from the Department of Biological Sciences were on hand to assist with scientific and artistic production.

Some visitors allowed us to borrow their photos to add to the gallery. They were a great addition! We promised to mail them back to their owners, so we did, but we have a "micro exhibit" here on our website. Thanks to all!

We also had a display of living microorganisms being projected from a SOAR during the LSU Museums Day 2003 exhibit. The creatures from Campus Lake looked pretty impressive (and slightly scary!) magnified about 1000 times life size right there in our hall!