• Question: whats the most exciting thing youve seen under the microscope?

    Asked by ashwee274933 to Kat, Debbie, Glyn, Jon, Nicola on 12 Mar 2013. This question was also asked by u11stephensc.
    • Photo: Kathryn McMahon

      Kathryn McMahon answered on 12 Mar 2013:

      In my last job I worked on live fish eggs. We had special fish that glowed under the lasers on our microscope and the fish embryos in the eggs were see through. All the blood vessels were bright green and you could see fluorescent red blood cells whizzing around them, they were awesome! Its hard to describe, but they’ve got some great videos on the Fish for Science youtube channel – see for yourself!

      http://www.youtube.com/user/CarolineZebrafish

    • Photo: Jonathan Stone

      Jonathan Stone answered on 13 Mar 2013:

      Rocks from Santorini! An eruption there, about 4000 years ago devastated the ancient Minoan civilisation and is thought to be behind the legend of the lost city of Atlantis. In the rocks, you can see little crystals that tell you what happened in the final few days and weeks before the eruption…and what set it all off. Microscopes are really important to volcanologists.

    • Photo: Debbie Crockard

      Debbie Crockard answered on 13 Mar 2013:

      @Kat that sounds really cool!

      I think the most exciting thing I’ve seen was baby starfish – they look exactly like adults but really tiny!

    • Photo: Nicola Fletcher

      Nicola Fletcher answered on 13 Mar 2013:

      I have seen cells that were grown from a heart – they beat! The cells that are not touching any other cells beat on their own but once they join up with another cell the two beat together. It’s very cool. I’ve put a link to a video of it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M30-oInTKs4

    • Photo: Glyn Barrett

      Glyn Barrett answered on 13 Mar 2013:

      Hi U11! I was working with some predatory fungi and how they capture nematodes (or tiny worms) to get nitrogen and other nutrition. The fungus produces little hoops which attract the worms and trap them by pulling themselves tight. Its really cool but a bit grisly to watch.
      David Attenborough in Life of Plants explains it really well in this clip, enjoy 🙂

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