Overview

In order to image the worms with the Zeiss microscope, there are several steps:

have worms ready to pick in an agar plate, preferably with some food left so that the worms are easier to pick
prepare some agarose chunks on imaging slides: the agarose chunk is necessary to keep the worms moist and avoids drying them out
image the worms under the microscope

Materials

Put a slide in between two other slides
Melt the agarose in the microwave
Using a glass Pasteur pipette (and a rubber sucker), suck up a ml or so of melted 2 % agarose solution
Put a drop of melted agarose solution on the slide
Quickly cover it perpendicularly with another slide so that the liquid flattens out
Wait a few minutes that the agarose solution solidifies
Gently remove the covering slide by pulling it out
Use the same slide to cut out a nice square of agarose patch
Optionally, cut out the square into 4 smaller squares to analyse 4 different samples
Pick worms onto the agarose patch
Take out the tetramisol 10 mM from the -20 C freezer and put a drop of it on the worms so that they stop moving
Cover the worms with a cover slip
The slide is ready to be imaged

Turn on the microscope
Turn on the camera
Open OpenLab software on computer
Make sure that the light button that keeps the light at maximum intensity is off
Make sure that the stick that redirects the image to the computer is pushed in
Fasten the slide on the stage
Use the non-oil 10 X objective to find the worms
Move to the 40 X oil objective
Add a drop of oil on the slide
Slowly move the objective into the oil
Focus on the worms and find a good image
Redirect the image to the computer by pulling the stick out
Click on the camera symbol in OpenLab in order to visualise the image
Adjust the lighting to get a good image
Take image by clicking in OpenLab