problem with pictures of air particles

[ania morris]

My son decided to do a sience project about Air Particles and Air Quality. He placed small cardborads in different lcations for 10 days , however air particles are very difficult to see and he has only a few visible . We have a digital camera and he took many picures but honestly you can see nothing there . My question is do we need a special camera with magnifying lense to take picures, or there is a special way to take pictures?I feel guilty because I convinced him that will be a great science project . I did not expect that air is so clean that we can hardly see anything . Please help

[Bob.Burkhart]

Prior to setting out the cardboard did you take 'control shots' of the medium? If so, you can do side-by-side comparisons using lighting to increase the effect.

If not, did you have a control medium that you put in an enclosed space (like a zip lock bag)?

Finally, if not, use a clean piece of cardboard to compare with. You may even want to try examining a piece of the subject cardboard under a microscope to see if you can do a 'dirt count', using consistent magnification and counting the particles in a single view sample, rather than trying to do a simple visual comparison, again, against some type of control.

Hopefully this will give you and your son some ideas to pursue.

The most important thing in any experiment is to document what you did, and what you found. Even if the experiment is a total failure, documenting why you believe it failed will often be appreciated as good scientific process in and of itself.

[jessicahua]

hi!

Is this the project that your son is doing?

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/mentorin ... p009.shtml

I do not know a lot about cameras, but what kind of camera setting are you using? do you have the micro setting on your camera? According to this site, a micro-setting will make it easier to see the air particles.

Hope this helps!