It might be noticed that some of the images in this blog features a small black square while in others a ‘golden’ coin as a scale. It is strange that given my training the the field of science I have decided to use everyday objects as a scale for some of my leaf scans or photos, rather than a ruler, which is what a true scientist would probably use. There are reasons for these, some practical, some philosophical.
The black square is a 1cm x 1cm square cut out from paper and coloured black with a market. I use this when I make leaf scans, and the only reason I scan leaves is because I am using some of these scans to obtain the leaf areas of some of these specimens. This is part of a plant functional traits study I am conducting for my Ph.D. A ruler would have been inappropriate here because it would be less convenient trying to get the area of the ruler as a scale. Most of these images I have scanned for my study are in greyscale and therefore not featured in this blog. Rather than accumulating tons of images which I would not use beyond my postgraduate work, I thought I’d scan some of them in colour and place them up here to share.
The coin of course, is an Australian $2 coin, which is about 2cm in diameter. I use it as a scale because it is the most unobtrusive scale I can find in a pinch. I conced of course that my flash tends to overexpose the coin. Nonetheless, I kind of like the idea that by featuring the side with the aboriginal man, Gwoya Jungarai, I am in some way paying homage to the traditional land owners of this wonderful continent, whose accumulated and intimate knowledge of the flora and fauna we can never hope to fully embrace through a scientific outlook alone.
David Tng 