Monson's Queer Shrinkage Dilemma  

If one gets a tiny, wee bit, of liver,
From amphiuma or mouse extirpated,
How dust one keep the size of the sliver,
As if it had not been extrapolated?

It is "ALTERED" in chems like the -enes and -anals
By which cells and their extras are mimed.
Their parts are be-twisted in tortuous scrawls,
Pushing and pulled, while the fixing is timed!

All this goes on through the thick and the thin,
While the fixes go in and the sols are extracted.
Sols and gels equally changed by the din,
And the process proceeds, and the price is exacted.

But still more questions from old and from young,
How changed cell sizes in cells from the sick?
"What effect of the fix and the buff on the size?" 
	is re-sung, and re-sung, and re-sung to demise.
And when finally the cell's all fixed and hung out, it does look, after all,

	like the butt of a trick.

So tell me my friends of that wee bit o' tissue
That's rolled, and pummeled, and tweak'd just a bit.
When you measure the cell and it cries out the issue,
"Your fix and the buff left me _____er each min-it?"

What's precise in the rulings you always applies,
Once the cell's been altered from liver by trick?
And your claiming to know its original guise,
Are you certain you knew it, within just a tick?

And if you are certain within just a meter,
That the size of the cell is changed 1 per hextillion.
Did you not estimate with the sig of a cheater,
And the correction applied's barely 1 in a zillion?

So please let me know, 'er the toll of more bells
And ease the deep pain of this metric malaise.
How DO you measure the shrinkage of cells,
Is it done in a night, or perhaps, in two daze?


Frederick C. Monson, PhD
Center for Advanced Scientific Imaging
West Chester University
West Chester, Pennsylvania, USA, 19383
610-738-0437
fmonson@wcupa.edu