How do you take a specimen of a cheek cell?

Answer 1

All you have to do is take a cotton bud and wipe it on your mouth by your cheek and take that and wipe it on a slide and put a cover slip on it ! Then put it under a microscope! and you are done, see how your cheek cells look!

Answer 2

Cheek Cell Experiment

For this experiment you will need:

An unused cotton bud

A microscope

A Slide

A coverslip

Some Methylene blue stain

A dropping pipette

Method

Scrape the cells out of your mouth with a cotton bud using your finger to push against the cotton bud.

Put the cells on the slide by gently rubbing the cotton bud against the slide ( Caution : Do not let the slide touch the desk as this will ruin your results).

Add some Methylene Blue Stain to the slide (Do this over a sink as it can get messy!).

Put a coverslip over the slide ( Caution : Be careful with the coverslip as they are very delicate and break extremely easily).

Put the slide under the microscope.

Focus the microscope on the 10x objective, then the 20x and 40x objectives.

Draw a diagram of the cheek cell (Below).

8. Clear away all of the equipment used.

Observations

The cheek cell is found inside of the mouth on the cheek. It is a fairly simple cell consisting of a nucleus, cell membrane and cytoplasm. It is quite hard to get a good focus on the microscope but when you do it is an interesting cell to look at. It will fade away however, as the slide will steam up and the cell will disappear into the stain. This can be resolved by simply doing the experiment again.

Discussion

The cell is a difficult one to focus on as it is so small. The cheek cell is made out of squamous epithelium which is a substance that usually is a major element of flat cells. When I did the experiment the cells were difficult to see because they were stained to much and the slide was left on the desk for a short period of time, meaning I had many other cells as well as the cheek cells. I repeated the test 5 minutes later and I got very good results. The entire cell was clear to see and I only had it on the 20x objective.

There was however, one fault in this process which cannot be overcome. This is that the light being generated from the microscope in order to see the cell, does make the Methylene Blue stain evaporate although there is a coverslip over it.

This is annoying because it means whenever you finally get a good focus on the cell, the cell will disappear so you have to repeat the experiment and then you may not get another good focus on the cell. This is also a fault that cannot be overcome. I hope this write up on the experiment has helped you to do your experiment and evaluation of the cell.
All you have to do is take a cotton bud and wipe it on your mouth by your cheek and take that and wipe it on a slide and put a cover slip on it ! Then put it under a microscope! and you are done, see how your cheek cells look!

Answer 3

You can use a Q-tip. Just rub it on the inside of your cheek. If you want to look at them under a microscope, you just have to rub the Q-tip on the slide.

Answer 4

To identify the human cheek cells check for the cell that secretes a continuous supply of mucin.