Quality making and repair of violin family instruments.

Click the "Visual Tour" to the left to go on a tour of Olivia's day visiting the Advanced Microscopy Facility which is part of the Pelling Lab for Biological Physics at the University of Ottawa. A few selected pictures are shown below.

More images and details will be added soon.
 

Olivia's husband is a Canada Research Chair and Professor at the University of Ottawa and in his lab he studies the ultrastructure and biophysics of living cells. Using some of his microscopes (A Nikon Epi-Fluorescence and Phase Contrast Microscope and a Nikon Resonant Scanner Laser Confocal Microscope) he and Olivia took a closer look at a variety of hard and soft domestic and exotic tone woods. The fluorescence microscope allowed them to capture transmitted light images of whole slices of wood whereas the confocal microscope allowed them to peer inside the three dimensional structure of the wood.

Click the Visual Tour link at the top of the page for more pictures of our day in the lab!

Olivia preparing thin sections of wood for the microscopes.

Olivia's husband, Andrew Pelling, running the microscopes. In the background you can see fluorescence images of highly figured maple and pear wood.

An image of the low density cellular structure in spruce wood which causes it to be so soft and flexible. The image shown is as wide as a single human hair (100 micrometers).

Click the Visual Tour link at the top of the page for more pictures of the day in the lab!