Sunday, March 22, 2009

Dull as ditchwater?







Ditches can be surprisingly interesting, on a microscopic scale. This diatom and filament of Spirogyra came from a ditch beside a disused railway line at Romaldkirk in Teesdale this afternoon. In one of the images you can see a diatom dividing.

4 comments:

  1. Nice work, Greenfingers. Seeing this makes me want to go out and buy a microscope - I am missing so much. Your description of the rotifer reminds me of the giant machines used to dig the channel tunnel.

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  2. Fascinating. Keep it coming.
    Have you ever seen any results from the cheepish 'microscopes' which plug in to a USB port? I keep looking at them but would prefer to have the views of someone who has used one first.

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  3. Reminds me somewhat of Agatha Christie's `Murder at the Vicarage' when Miss Marple's snotty nephew Raymond sniffs at her village of St Mary Mead as a dull "stagnant pool" and she retorts by pointing out that there is a lot of life in a stagnant pool which you see once you put a drop of water under a microscope.

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  4. Thanks for your comments, Midmarsh John. I have borrowed a USB microscope to see how well it performs and have posted a few pictures. It takes a little getting used to but produces similar images to those you might get with a conventional low power dissecting microscope - but the big advantage is that it's as portable as the laptop its linked to and several people can look at the image at once.

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