What is the purpose of heat-fixing the smear?

to kill the organisms/bacteria and to attach them to the slide

Which part of the specimen (cell or background) is stained in a Simple Stain?

the cell

Would you have gotten the same result if you used an anionic (-charged) stain?

No

Do you obtain an accurate estimate of cell size with a simple stain?

No

For which step is the timing most critical?

the decolorizing step because over decolorization may occur

What would you expect to observe if the Simple Stain procedure rather than the Gram stain had been used on a smear containing a mixture of gram-positive cocci and gram negative rods?

the cells would all be the same color

Microorganisms are best defined as organisms that

are too small to be seen with the unaided eye

Among the types of microorganisms, the ______ are noncellular.

Viruses

Unable to obtain sharp focus using oil immersion objective lens. What is the possible cause?

Condenser is too low

If a microbiology lab technician left the safranin out of the Gram stain procedure, what would be the result?

the Gram-positive cells would remain purple but the Gram-negative cells would be colorless

A pure culture contains

only one identified species of microorganism

What is the term for a culture made from one isolated colony?

Both axenic and pure