Gross Anatomy

December 15, 2015

When you give someone a handheld digital microscope, one of the first things they do is look at the back of their hand. I’ve seen it happen hundreds of times. So for this post, I thought it was about time to get up-close and personal with one the of the Celestron Microscopes I have been using.

This might get ugly, people. But it’s definitely going to be cool, gross and interesting. All at the same time.

I started with the back of my hand. It’s pretty tame. Your regular cross-hatching in the skin.

I moved on to my fingernails and cuticle. I was actually a little scared about this as I’ve never been one to take care of my nails. I study critters that live in the dirt! I make no excuses. But it turns out that these looked better than I thought.

Then the scary part. My face. The first picture below is of a freckle. My mom used to call them beauty marks. So much for that. When you look at my face, the mark looks perfectly round. But under the microscope you can see the melanin patterning is not symmetrical.