A World of Life in a Drop of Water — My Father's Microscope

Bob Blaylock · Mar 9, 2009

When my father passed away in December, I inherited, among other things, his microscope. Lately, I've been going out and collecting bits of gutter water, moss, lichen, and such; mixing it together, and then looking at random drops of it through this microscope.

Just last night, I felt inspired to dig out my cheap digital camera, point it into the microscope's eyepiece, and see what kind of pictures I could get. My expectations were very low. I figured that to get decent pictures though a microscope would probably require more specialized equipment than this.

I was rather pleasantly surprised with the results that I got. Though one could wish for better pictures than these, I've been getting results much better than I thought I could get using such crude methods.

All of these pictures were taken with a Kodak DC3200 camera, using the 15X eyepiece and the 10X objective on the microscope. (The microscope has 5X, 10X and 60X objectives, and 5X, 10X, and 15X eyepieces. The 15X eyepiece has a scale built into it, part of which is visible in the last of the attached pictures here.

Of the attached pictures, the first and third are of paramecia (not the same one in each picture). I think the second is a dead tartigrade or “water bear”. It wasn't moving. The last two, I think, are of some sort of rotifers.

All of these images are to the same scale. According to notes in my father's hand, written on the inside of the microscope's case, with the 10X objective, each ten marks (that's the small marks, ten from one number to the next) on the scale in the 15X eyepiece is equal to 122 micrometers. That's about a hundred pixels on each of these images, so each pixel on these images is 1.22 micrometers.

My display has about 100 pixels per inch, so each inch on my display is approximately 122 micrometers in the scale of these images.

1_in
1_mm CONVERT
.122_mm
÷

So these pictures, as they appear on my screen, are about 208X actual size.

Rolfe · Mar 9, 2009

Lovely!

Rolfe.

kookbreaker · Mar 9, 2009

Most excellent!

Bob Blaylock · Mar 10, 2009

Bob Blaylock said:
All of these pictures were taken with a Kodak DC3200 camera, using the 15X eyepiece and the 10X objective on the microscope. (The microscope has 5X, 10X and 60X objectives, and 5X, 10X, and 15X eyepieces. The 15X eyepiece has a scale built into it, part of which is visible in the last of the attached pictures here.
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All of these images are to the same scale.

I was just looking again at the full (non-cropped) versions of these images, and I have realized that the “dead water bear” picture was not taken with the 15X eyepiece. The 15X eyepiece, as I mentioned, has a scale in it, while the 5X and 10X eyepieces do not. The scale appears in every picture that I have taken and kept, except for the “Dead Water Bear” picture, so I must have taken that one with one of the other eyepieces.

See the attached pictures. The scale appears in the “Rotifers” picture, but not in the “Dead Water Bear” picture.

I should be able to figure out which one I did use, assuming I was still using the 10X objective. When I was observing this, I did, at some point, measure it and determine that it was about the right size to be an adult water bear. As it appears on my screen, it spans about 30 millimeters. A 208X magnification would mean that it was really 0.144 mm, which would be awfully small. If I had used the 5X eyepiece, staying with the 10X objective, then the magnification would be reduced by a factor of three. «208 3 ÷» gives me 69.3333… — call it 70.

«30 70 ÷» 0.42 of a millimeter. Still a bit small. I bet I used the 5X objective as well, so reduce the magnification to 35. «30 35 ÷» gives me 0.85 of a millimeter — a very plausible size for a tardigrade. So that picture was surely taken using the 5X eyepiece and the 5X objective.

Bob Blaylock · Mar 15, 2009

Today (well, now it was yesterday) I went to a nearby park to gather samples from a duck pond. Of course, I took more pictures. I seem to be getting better at producing usable pictures this way.

I found a lot of this sort of unicellular algae in the sample. It seemed to be, by far, the most dominant form of life in the water from this pond. The image here was taken using the 60X objective, with the 15X eyepiece. I estimate that each pixel on this image represents 0.2 of a micrometer. The two algae cells shown here are approximately 20 micrometers in diameter.

This cyclops was photographed using the 5X objective and the 10X eyepiece. I estimate each pixel to be 3.45 micrometers, and this Cyclops to have an overall length of about 135 micrometers.

Here's a rather interesting rotifer. I took this using the 10X objective and the 15X eyepiece. This seems to be the combination that I most often use, which produces an image in which each pixel is 1.22 micrometers. This rotifer is about 300 micrometers in length. The round object appears to be attached to the rotifer. I don't know if it's some sort of egg sac, or just some random object that the rotifer grabbed on to and had been towing around ever since.

I am sure that at some point in my distant past, I had a name for this critter. I cannot now come up with any name for it, nor can I find any help on the net. (It's much easier to find out about something if you know what it is called.) It's roughly 130 micrometers in diameter.

This last object, I have no idea what it is. When I first saw one, I though perhaps it had to do with the unicellular green algae in the first picture. It looked like there was a hollow space inside, with some of these algae inside of it. Indeed, the dark circular objects that you see are these green algae, but they are in front of this object, not inside of it. This was photographed using the 10X objective and 15X eyepiece, and it is approximately 170 micrometers in diameter.

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pipelineaudio · Mar 15, 2009

this is so cool that I cant put it in words!

I want to try this!

LarianLeQuella · Mar 15, 2009

I want to go out and buy a microscope now...

Beanbag · Mar 15, 2009

I had a microscope when I was a kid, and loved it. Of course, it didn't take long for me to disassemble it completely and put it back together, several times. It always worked after each time, often better than before because the quality control at the manufacturer was pretty bad -- dust inside, smears on the lenses, etc.

Nearly got me fired when I was working as a lab grunt in high school. The boss came back early from lunch and discovered I'd spread his $2000 pride-and-joy workhorse binocular microscope across the bench in pieces and was happily cleaning the interior optical surfaces. I was like, what? I've done this before. I sent him out for a smoke, put everything back together by the time he'd returned, and even he had to admit you could "see" better through it than before. I didn't tell him that the most likely culprit was tobacco smoke (that stuff gets everywhere, even inside hermetically-sealed units) condensed on the lenses. The guy smoked like a chimney, especially when writing.

I've been looking at the 'scopes at American Science and Surplus. Some of the Russian models are extremely tempting, price-and-quality-wise.

Beanbag

Bob Blaylock · Mar 16, 2009

These three pictures were all taken using the 60X objective, and the 15X eyepiece. Each pixel is approximately 0.2 of a micrometer.

I'm not sure what those first two things are. They're two different instances of the same kind of critter. Looking at it in motion, it reminds one very much of a pillbug, but it is obviously nothing of the sort. Each of these examples is about 50 micrometers long.

That last picture, I think, is of a diatom. t appears to be about 30 micrometers across.

Rolfe · Mar 16, 2009

This is so cool!

Rolfe.

Bob Blaylock · Mar 17, 2009

I've figured out what this critter is:

It's a Daphnia^WP, AKA a Water flea^WP.

I still have no idea what

and

are.

Soapy Sam · Mar 17, 2009

Diatoms have silica tests. They are often included in toothpaste as an abrasive / filler. You might try diluting a drop of tp and see what you find.
Ben Goldacre in his book "Bad Science" says...'

MRSA looks like a ball.Bacilli look like a rod. You can tell the difference between them using 100X magnification- the Edu Science Microscope Set at ToysRUs for £9.99 will do the job very well. (If you buy one, with the straightest face in the world, I recommend looking at your sperm: it's quite a soulful moment'.

Bob Blaylock · Mar 18, 2009

The duck-pond sample that I gathered on Sunday has been sitting in a sealed container just outside my front window for a few days.

I took a look tonight at a drop therefrom. The unicellular green algae that I had previously described is behaving differently now. It's gathered into groups. Some of it is still alive and active, some of it seems to be dead, and some of it looks like it's been squished and broken open.

The above picture was taken using the 10X objective and the 15X eyepiece. One pixel = 1.22 micrometers. Each numbered tick on the scale is 122 micrometers.

All the other pictures I am posting tonight were taken with the 60X objective and the 15X eyepiece; 1 pixel = 0.2 micrometers. Where the scale is visible, each numbered tick is 20 micrometers.

Here's a closer look at some of the “squished” algae:

Those numerous tiny objects — about 2 micrometers in diameter — are very lively and active. I'm fairly sure they are some sort of bacteria. Perhaps they are killing the algae.

Here's a view of what I believe to be some other variety of bacteria:

And here's something else I've been seeing in these samples. I've seen them before, but this is the first time I've photographed them:

These are very small, much smaller than the unicellular green algae. Perhaps they are some form of cyanobacteria, (formerly known as “blue-green algae”, but recently reclassified as a bacteria, and no longer considered algae). Most instances of this that I have seen look more like the first example than the second, but it always has four cells, no more and no less.
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Bob Blaylock · Mar 21, 2009

Bob Blaylock said:
This cyclops was photographed using the 5X objective and the 10X eyepiece. I estimate each pixel to be 3.45 micrometers, and this Cyclops to have an overall length of about 135 micrometers.
[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=13253&stc=1&d=1237105550[/qimg]

Hmmm…

I managed to go badly astray in estimating the size of this critter before. I was off by a factor of more than ten. Depending on whether you count the apparent fringes off of the tail, this critter is, in this image, about 470 to 570- pixels in length. At 3.45 micrometers per pixel, this means the actual length of the critter was about 1.6 to 2 millimeters.

I wonder how I came up with 135 micrometers as my previous estimate.

Bikewer · Mar 21, 2009

Brings back memories... When I was a kid in the late 50s and early 60s, I was very fond of microscopy; I'd had at least some sort of instrument from childhood. Spent many hours peering at everything I could think of.
Read "Microbe Hunters" around freshman high-school, and found it really inspiring.

Funny story... My mom worked at a "convalescent" hospital that dealt mostly with TB patients. (No effective drugs back then) It was a Catholic hospital, and mom told the nun who ran the lab of my hobby. The lady was very helpful, and would send home tons of slides, test-tubes, pipettes, etc.
One day mom brought home a water sample with the instruction to take a look at it.
I did, and it was filled with all manner of bugs I'd never seen before.

It was holy water from the font.....

Bob Blaylock · Mar 22, 2009

It appears I have a correction to make. These creatures, which I initially identified as rotifers, I now believe to be Vorticellas.

This creature, which I also identified as a rotifer, I still believe to be a rotifer.

Here is a closer view of a creature that I believe to be a Vorticella:

They also exist in a free-swimming form, called a “telotroch”. I believe that this is an example of that:

These are from the duck-pond sample that I took about a week ago. The two previous pictures were taken with the 60X objective, and the 15X eyepiece. Each pixel is 0.2 of a micrometer. Each numbered tick on the scale is 20 micrometers.

After nearly a week, in a sealed container, nearly all of the unicellular green algae (which had been the dominant life form in this sample) has died off; and no bacteria are by far the most dominant form of life to be found. Most of them have been free-swimming, and not terribly interesting in and of themselves. I did find this unusual arrangement, which consist of bacteria clinging to some very, very fine filaments. I don't know what these filaments are, or how they came into existence. Perhaps the bacteria had something to do with creating them. This picture was taken using the 10X objective and the 15X eyepiece. Each pixel is 1.22 micrometers. Each numbered tick on the scale is 122 micrometers.

I'm not sure what this is. I've seen several of these; each one appears to consist of three cells. This picture was taken with the 60X objective and the 15X eyepiece.

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kookbreaker · Mar 22, 2009

LarianLeQuella said:
I want to go out and buy a microscope now...

I can help out there.

((note the .sig))

kookbreaker · Mar 22, 2009

I forgot about this until it was too late to edit. I wrote a microscope buyers guide for the Store's blog a month ago:

Microscope Buyer's Guide

Aitch · Mar 22, 2009

Soapy Sam said:
Ben Goldacre in his book "Bad Science" says...'

I recommend looking at your sperm: it's quite a soulful moment'.

Click to expand...

And somebody on the Badscience forums has complained about it - won't give the book to her children because of it and demands he remove it from the next edition. :boggled:

ETA: Which is silly, 'cause it's probably one of the first things a teenage male looks at when he gets a microscope.

Bob Blaylock · Mar 23, 2009

At North 38°33'51.40" West 121°26'42.17", there is this odd little park. It's just a small island in the middle of a misshapen intersection where the streets apparently didn't line up as they were intended. On this island, someone's put in park benches, and fancy landscaping, and even a fountain.

Today, on my way home from church, I stopped there, to get a sample from that fountain. I found the fountain to have considerably less water than it was supposed to have. I could hear the pump running, but there wasn't enough water to feed it. What water was there, however, was very green, with some nice green scum on the top, leading me to expect that I'd find it to be rich with microscopic critters for me to observe and photograph.

Oddly, the only container I could muster up in which to contain a sample was an empty Simple Green bottle, which was interesting since this water was almost exactly the same color as the product that originally came in that bottle.

I expected that I was going to find a lot of the same unicellular algae that I found in the duck pond sample; and probably a good variety of other things as well.

All that I did find was some sort of non-motile Cyanobacteria^WP. That was it. I saw a few dead Daphnia^WP, but other than that, no sign of anything that is or was ever alive except for the cyanobacteria.

This picture was taken with the 60X objective and the 15X eyepiece. The numbered ticks on the scale indicate a distance of 20 micrometers.

Bob Blaylock · Mar 23, 2009

Looks like I've identified a few of the unknowns.

is apparently a Coleps.

(There wasn't a Wikipedia article on this critter, but I have added a stub, which will hopefully get filled in by others who have some actual knowledge of this creature to contribute.)

is apparently an example of Scenedesmus, a eukaryotic algae, and not, as I had supposed, a cyanobacteria. All of the examples that I had observed have exactly four cells, but apparently, it can occur in colonies of anywhere from 2 to 32 cells.

Bob Blaylock · Mar 24, 2009

Tonight's pictures were all taken with the 60X objective and the 15X eyepiece. Each pixel is about 0.2 micrometers, and each numbered tick on the scale is about 20 micrometers.

This first one is a very curious thing. I guess I am operating right on the very edge of what my microscope can resolve.

Notice the string of dots above the scale. I assume these are very small bacteria, less than a micrometer in size. I can resolve the image just well enough to tell that they are there, but not to discern any detail at all. I don't know what is causing them to arrange as they have in a more-or-less straight line.

Here are some diatoms:

And here's a pretty good close-up of a cyanobacterium:

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Bob Blaylock · Mar 25, 2009

From a drainage ditch where I work.

There was very little recognizable life in this sample. I found a few cells like those shown here, which seem to be about as generic and nondescript as a single-celled organism can possibly be. These are about 40 micrometers in diameter. 60X objective used for both these pictures. The one with two cells was taken through the 10X eyepiece, while the one showing one cell was taken through the 15X eyepiece.

Bob Blaylock · Mar 26, 2009

From a pile of buckets and flower pots that a neighbor has carelessly left out in the rain. The 15X eyepiece was used for all these shots; some with the 10X objective and some with the 60X; it should be obvious which are which. The paramecia in these pictures are around 100 micrometers in length.

Bob Blaylock · Mar 27, 2009

My digital camera had been starting to get a bit flaky. I was blaming it on the CompactFlash card, and looking to buy another one, but it seems that CompactFlash cards are getting scarcer and more expensive, to the point that it just made more sense to buy a new camera. For about sixty bucks at Wal*Mart, I got a Sakar 87690. It has much higher resolution, though it seems to have a considerably more difficult time getting the exposure right when used through the microscope.

Tonight's picture is of a paramecium found in a sample from a drainage ditch on the grounds of the factory where I work.

I even have a video, too, of this same paramecium swimming around and eating.

Bob Blaylock · Mar 28, 2009

Tonight, I was revisiting some of the vials containing samples from the pat week or so. Not much of interest, really, that I hadn't seen before.

15X eyepiece for all of tonight's pictures.

This first is of some odd little crustacean. This was with the 10X objective. Each numbered tick on the scale is 122 micrometers. I estimate this critter to be about half a millimeter in length.

Next, we have some sort of bacteria. This image and the two following it were made using the 60X objective. Each numbered tick on the scale is 20 micrometers. This one appears to be about 60 micrometers in length.

This next one is shorter, at about 40 micrometers. I suspect I may be seeing it in a very early stage of dividing. The contents of the cell seem to be “pinched”*in the middle.

And I think this example may be at a later point in the division process.

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Bob Blaylock · Mar 29, 2009

I think this may be some form of a crustacean, or possibly a tardigrade.

This, I am fairly sure, is a euglena

It's quite small. The main body of the creature seems to be about 50 micrometers long, and the flagellum is a bit longer than that. Counting the flagellum, the whole critter is about 120 micrometers in length.

And here's a paramecium.

All the images up to this point were taken with the 10X objective and the 15X eyepiece. Each numbered tick on the scale is 122 micrometers.

The paramecium in that last picture was an unusually large one. I estimate it to be nearly 200 micrometers in length; about twice what I regard as typical for a paramecium.

This one was alive, but not very active, and it seemed to move (when it moved at all) mostly in circles. I wonder if the bacteria that I saw clinging to it had anything to do with that. You can see a few of them in this image around the 3.2-3.3 ticks.

This last image, of the same paramecium, taken with the 60X objective, gives a better view of these bacteria.

In this last image, each numbered tick is 20 micrometers.

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chrisjeans · Mar 29, 2009

Re: "I'm not sure what this is. I've seen several of these; each one appears to consist of three cells. "

That's pine pollen. See attached. I used to see this in animal feces all the time. I was working as a vet tech by the way, that wasn't a hobby.

Floyt · Mar 29, 2009

The bugger in the first image of your last post seems to be some kind of midge larva. Note the head capsule encasing the entire front end! Most of them are quite a bit larger than what you found. Notoriously difficult to identify below family level

Bob Blaylock · Mar 29, 2009

Today, I got it into my head to try to get to the American River, and get a sample therefrom.

One of my other hobbies is Geocaching. In GoogleEarthing to find a plausible route to the river, I discovered that there was a Geocache along the route that I was deciding to use. So, my wife and I decided to get that cache while we were at it.

We never actually made it to the river. The impression I got from Google Earth was that there would be a creek, a park beyond that creek, and a river at the far edge of that park. What we found wasn't anything like a park as we know it. It was just very rough, undeveloped land. As we were crossing it, we realized that the sun was setting, and we didn't want to be crossing such rough terrain in the dark.

The creek was not-quite dry, and I did find some usable samples there, at North 38°35'39.0" West 121°27'50.7".

All of these pictures except the last one were taken with the 10X objective and the 15X eyepiece. Each numbered tick on the scale is 122 micrometers.

This is Spirogyra, a kind of algae. The chloroplasts form a spiral pattern in each cell.

Here is a Daphnia.

I was able to see the heart beating in this critter, as I watched it in my microscope. The dark circle is an air bubble trapped below the cover slip.

I'm not sure what this is, other than that it is some kind of a protozoan. It vaguely resembles a euglena, but that's not what it is. A euglena pulls itself forward with its flagellum, with the flagellum leading ahead of it. This critter swam with the “tail” trailing behind it.

I'm not sure what this is in this last picture either. It's some sort of small, multicellular animal, about 1.5 millimeters in length. I saw it in my vial of creek water, and specifically targeted it with the eyedropper to put it on a hanging-drop slide for viewing. I used the 5X objective and the 5X eyepiece for this one. There's no scale, because that is built into the 15X eyepiece, which I wasn't using this time; but in this picture, as I have posted it, each pixel is 2.68 micrometers. This creature was not transparent enough for the usual from-below form of illumination, so I called my wife over and had her hold the flashlight to illuminate it from above.

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Rocko · Mar 30, 2009

Reading this thread has made me so excited about my son getting older; I can't wait to show him stuff like this

arthwollipot · Mar 30, 2009

Wow. This is extremely cool.

Bob Blaylock · Mar 30, 2009

Some kind of worm, I think. Both pictures taken with the 15X eyepiece; first picture with the 10X objective (numbered tick = 122 micrometers) and the second with the 60X objective (numbered tick = 20 micrometers).

This worm is about 360 micrometers long and about 14 micrometers thick.

A couple more pictures of some spirogyra. 10X objective, 15X eyepiece, numbered tick = 122 micrometers.

And here's some sort of little crustacean. 10X objective, 15X eyepiece, numbered tick = 122 micrometers.

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kellyb · Mar 30, 2009

So cool!

calebprime · Mar 30, 2009

Here's where I thank my Dad. He had these cool high-powered microscopes in his lab. I spent many hours looking at amoebae.

Thanks, Dad. I hope I can pass on some of that to my kid.

Cool thread.

RationalVetMed · Mar 30, 2009

Bob Blaylock said:
I was able to see the heart beating in this critter, as I watched it in my microscope. The dark circle is an air bubble trapped below the cover slip.

I think what you saw was more likely to be food moving along the gut - creatures this size are too small to have a blood circulation.

These pictures, and your dedication to collecting, viewing and posting them are simply fantastic. Big respect.

Yuri

Bob Blaylock · Mar 31, 2009

Yuri Nalyssus said:
Bob Blaylock said:

I was able to see the heart beating in this critter, as I watched it in my microscope. The dark circle is an air bubble trapped below the cover slip.

Click to expand...

I think what you saw was more likely to be food moving along the gut - creatures this size are too small to have a blood circulation.

According to the Wikipedia entry on Daphnia^WP:

In many species, the carapace is translucent or nearly so and as a result they make excellent subjects for the microscope as one can observe the beating heart.
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…Daphnia, like many animals, are prone to alcohol intoxication, and make excellent subjects for studying the effects of the depressant on the nervous system – due to the translucent exoskeleton, and the visibly altered heart rate. … This experiment can also be done using caffeine, nicotine or adrenaline and observing an increase in heart rate.

Yuri Nalyssus said:
These pictures, and your dedication to collecting, viewing and posting them are simply fantastic. Big respect.

What is fantastic to me is that I can even take these pictures. I'm aware of some fairly expensive devices that are basically digital cameras specifically designed to mount on a microscope in place of the eyepiece. Our own Kookbreaker sells some of them in his store. It seems that his cheapest one starts at just under a hundred dollars, and they go very rapidly up in price from there, to his top model costing seven hundred dollars. I'm now taking these pictures with a Sakar 87690 that I bought for sixty dollars at Wal*Mart, having just recently upgraded to that from my old Kodak DC3200 that I was previously using.

I imagine that Kookbreaker's digital microscopy attachments are much easier and more convenient to use, but I bet they don't take any better pictures than I'm getting.

Bob Blaylock · Mar 31, 2009

chrisjeans said:
Re: "I'm not sure what this is. I've seen several of these; each one appears to consist of three cells. "

That's pine pollen.

Floyt said:
The bugger in the first image of your last post seems to be some kind of midge larva.

Doing an images.google.com search on "pine pollen" and "midge larva" brought up pictures that look like the objects in question. So it appears that these identifications are correct.

So now I know what

and

are.

Anyone know what

is? This one is still a mystery to me.

RationalVetMed · Mar 31, 2009

Bob Blaylock said:
According to the Wikipedia entry on Daphnia^WP:

In many species, the carapace is translucent or nearly so and as a result they make excellent subjects for the microscope as one can observe the beating heart.

I stand corrected - jumping to conclusions again, apologies. It is extremely fitting that a creature as sweet as that should have a beating heart. I once fed a bag of them (they're commonly sold in pet shops as live fish food) to the terrapins I kept in my flat as a student. I've felt guilty about it to this day!

Yuri

arthwollipot · Apr 1, 2009

Daphnia can get drunk! Who'da thunk it?

A World of Life in a Drop of Water — My Father's Microscope

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