https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sye22XcABCMI have a small aquarium set up like a puddle
or a small stagnant pond. I threw in some
vegetable matter and I watch it develop a bio-community.
I made a video like this before
but I think it's a little more diverse now.
I like his wall art, but strongly recommend Clorox be added to the soup mix.
I taught for 3 years and in the Biology Course, the teacher was fixated on sharks, Why? Few meet a shark face to face, but many meet biofilm monsters spoon to the belly. This video of biofilms is much more relevant to life and something that can affect us, as in a dirty kitchen in your favorite restaurant. Yes, some are bitten by sharks, I knew one who had a chunk out of his tricep. Sharks are great in movies and foster ominous music at the beach, but biofilms are the real unseen monsters.
Very nice and what a coincidence!
I did something similar in high school. The biology teacher said we should fill a large jar with water and plant material and then look for life to appear. It worked! As the days passed, more and more little creatures appeared under my microscope. But one day, as I was looking at these tiny things swimming around, a huge thing walked across the slide, completely filling my field of view. That was the end of my science experiment. I didn't want a Twilight Zone plot developing in my basement.
Thanks for sharing. This brings back a flood of memories from my early childhood, my father was a Biology, Physics and Chemistry teacher (as well as the school districts photographer) at our local high school. I recall hanging out in his lab. In the 60's helping him make slides for his classes of this exact type of thing. He also had a setup similar to yours, it had more water in it (that came from one of our farm ponds) by the middle to the end of the year small fish and tadpoles would show up in it. Due to the moss (with eggs attached) he always included in it.
I loved those days spent with him in his classroom and lab.
Anyway, very cool and again thanks for sharing.
Thanks guys!
I live in Winnipeg There isn't any natural water within walking distance. This artificial biome works for me. I have pretty much given up on regular photography for now, but exploring the microscopic world--plants as well as microbes--is very enriching.
In the 1990s I headed a lab at a new TSDF, for Hazardous Waste. we had two bio tanks at 3/4 million gallons. To start the digestion process we had raw sewage from the publicly owned treatment works [POTW] deliver truck loads. then water was added and agitation started and molasses added. Wow, they thrived and had a high BOD, Biological Oxygen Demand.
OK boys forget the molasses, eat this... waste chemicals... YUCK... the BOD went to in-lab measurements to ZERO... we killed the bugs - like dead. Then in a week, the few living ones multiplied and ate organic hazardous waste and the BOD went up. The plant was able to digest hazardous waste and every 6 months the dead bugs were clear out of the tank bottoms, the liquid clear of hazardous chemicals was sent to the POTW. The traces of sludge and some from the still active tank gave life to the "cleaned out" tank.
The bugs in the "biofilm" are tenacious and cling to life. Chernobyl with all of it today radiation is a place of radiation-resistant bugs. I doubt that humans mutate and survive as they do in horror movies.
"We have found that associated bacterial communities from an intermediate background radiation site had lower mortality rates and were better able to tolerate exposure to four experimental doses of radiation than the bacterial communities from the other three study sites. "
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep22969
What a job! It seems science and engineering is far more interested in bacteria than protists. I can see and photograph bacteria. I find it interesting when they swarm and make alliances like they do. However, as a hobbyist, I enjoy the larger cells like protozoans and some algae like cytobacteria. They make better art. I'm no scientist.
So what did you shoot this video with?
An eyepiece camera that replaces the eyepiece on the microscope and connects by USB ot my computer.
Don, your usual interesting and worthwhile work. Merry Christmas to you and all those you hold dear.
Thanks my cyber spirit friend and same to you.
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