Experiment: I want to collect pollen and mold spores in a petri dish. Never mind why.
You say that like its something we wouldn't all enjoy.
I use a fan to blow a higher volume of air into the dish.
A good way to sample the environment.
The dish is filled with mineral spirits and evaporates in 2 minutes at room temp with the fan on, so I blow air on it for 1 minute, then let the evaporative oil finish evaporating, then I put it under the microscope.
I don't know exactly what you're talking about. You may be using jargon. However, we can guess that you have a solvent the evaporates but traps spores first. Is evaporative oil the same as mineral spirits?
The pollen and mold don't stick to the mineral spirits!
Should they?
Why? It sticks in the water, it works with vaseline, why doesn't this work?
II don't understand. You doi the same with water, but after evaporating, the spores stick to the slide. And you're not blowing them off. But maybe you are with mineral spirits?
Is there some kind of chemical repellence going on?
I'm not seeing a mechanism. Or if that's a word, even.
Do mineral spirits have a net pos or neg charge?
Not seeing the relevance.