What is this?
A peripheral blood smear.
What types of cells can be easily identified?
Red blood cells, neutrophils, platelets
This is also a lymphocyte in the lower left-hand corner and probably a monocyte in the middle of the far right.
Why are some cells red?
Red blood cells are red due to hemoglobin.
Why are some cells purple?
The white blood cells are purple due to the stains that have been added during the preparation of the slide.
What are the darker parts of the purple cells?
The nucleus.
The nucleus of neutrophils typically has several lobes and are not uniform in shape. In fact, they are grouped along with basophils and eosinophils as polymorphonuclear cells (PMNs).
What are the 3-dimensional shapes of the cells?
White blood cells are spherical. Red blood cells are biconcave disks: flattened and depressed in the center, with a dumbbell-shaped cross section, and a torus-shaped rim on the edge of the disk.
Red blood cells look like they have holes in them because they are thinner in the middle and therefore there is less hemoglobin there.
What characteristics of the cells are used to determine disease?
The size, shape, color and number of the cells can all be used.
In this image, there are likely too many white blood cells. Typically, there are about 500 red blood cells for every 1 white blood cell.
There is a moderate amount of variation in the size and shape of the red blood cells.
What kind of instrument was used to obtain this image?
A light microscope (as opposed to an electron microscope).
What is the function of the three main cell lines seen?
| Red blood cells | Carry oxygen from the lungs to the tissues. |
| White blood cells | Fight infection |
| Platelets | Clot blood |
What metric unit of length would be used to describe the size of these cells, how is this written and how big is it compared to a meter?
Micrometer, also known as a micron, and often written at μm, using the Greek letter mu. The prefix micro- indicates 10-6 which is one millionth of a meter.
Why don’t the red cells have a nucleus?
The red blood cells had a nucleus during their development but the nucleus was expelled when they matured. This allows them to be smaller and pass through the capillaries more easily.
CoMo Science 
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