Pursuing Truth

-

 I was working in the lab recently. I took a blood sample, to examine at it under the microscope. I had done this before, but it still fascinates me to see my own blood cells up close, in such great detail. I saw hundreds of red blood cells, many white blood cells, and I think I even saw some platelets. I have a camera connected to my microscope, and took a picture of the cells. I then used a measuring tool in the program to measure the width of the red and white blood cells. I added notes to the image to record details including what the image was, the date, and magnification. It looked good, and I saved the image.

I then thought to myself, "Are my measurements correct?" Of course I am the only one who would likely ever see the image and measurements, but I was curious to see if my measurements were consistent with documented and accepted data. After doing some research, and looking at information from multiple sources, it looked as though my measurements were off by a significant amount. This either meant that my blood cells were much larger than the average person, or - more likely - my measurements were incorrect.

I repeated the process again by placing the slide under the microscope, using one objective at a time, deciding on a good sample, and taking a snapshot. Before I did that, I noticed that the magnification selected in the software did not match the magnification of the microscope. That must have been how I got the incorrect measurements with the last image. I had done this so many times before that in my excitement, I missed a step. This time, I made sure the magnifications matched, I took another measurement of the cells, and found that my observations were in-line with the norm.

To the casual observer, none of this matters. To me, I would not be able to sleep having knowingly documented something - anything -  inaccurately and did not correct it. To me, the pursuit of truth is a journey which takes me to a better place with each step. The alternative leads to a place of ignorance, and that is not a place I want to visit.

Here is the second (corrected) image:



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Let's end the archaic management of time

-
Image
Every once in a while, twice a year to be exact, I am forced to go through the house and change the time on all the clocks, and other appliances that have clocks. The atomic clock in the kitchen doesn't need to be changed, my cell phone is ok, and computers auto-adjust, but I still have to make the rounds for the other devices. When we are an hour early or late on our first trip after such time-changing events, I also realize I need to change the clock in the car. Growing up in Indiana, this wasn't as much of a problem, as we didn't change our clocks. The only impact was that TV shows started an hour early (or late) half the year. Fellow Jolt judge, David Dossot , reminded me of "beat time" from the late 90's. It never caught on, but what a concept? Could one time zone for the entire planet be possible? I have heard all sorts of explanations as to why we have to change our clocks, but that is just half of the problem. The other half is the concept of ti
Read more

Product support - not supported

-
Image
I was looking for information, or rather details, on Visual Studio 2010. Looking at the Microsoft website, information is everywhere, but details are hard to find. It's bad enough that Microsoft changes the names of the editions with each release, but trying to find out what is in each edition, and what the differences are from one edition to another is very difficult. I have recently been on something of a quest, to champion the use of UML . Without tools, UML is just a bunch of boxes and lines that simply makes working with Visio that much more painful. I know that in the past, Microsoft has kept UML at an arms length. They have told me personally that they use it all the time when whiteboarding, but when it comes to implementing a design notation in their tools, they want to use their own standard. I can appreciate that because it does give them the flexibility to build development tools the way they want, without tying them to a set of rules defined by some external org
Read more

Watching and waiting for the competition

-
It's no secret that I am a fan of Apple. I own a lot of Apple products. I also own a lot of non-Apple products. I have owned iPhones before, but for the past few years, I have used Android phones. There is a lot of variety when it comes to Android phones. There are many companies making phones of all sizes, capabilities, and prices. The main reason I switched to Android a while back was because I wanted a bigger screen, and I wanted to know what it was really like to live with an Android phone. When Apple announced the iPhone 6 back in 2014, I was very interested. Honestly, I was nearly drooling on my keyboard as I watched the keynote announcement. I was also very interested when Apple announced the Apple Watch at the same keynote. As interested as I was however, I did not buy either of these. My Android phone was working just fine, and I could not use an Apple Watch with my Android phone. Also, I was curious to see how the Android world responded to the Apple Watch. Where Apple
Read more