Foldscoping in the classroom: Name that protist! Vorticella?

Jan 22, 2016 • 8:03 PM UTC

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Alice Dai

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In another installment of Foldscoping in the classroom, my friend Ellen and I decided to image the water from my biology teacher’s fish tank:

My sample:

Prepared wet mount slide with a piece of leaf.

I didn’t know what to expect since I had trouble imaging wet slides with the Foldscope in past attempts. But this time, I found something! We took a 20 minute video that I’ve attached to fully encapsulate the wonder and process of enlightenment of what we were looking at. Around the middle of the video, I finally realize that I’m seeing a living organism attached by a stalk to the leaf. My research teacher (the guy wearing black) calls in a group of science teachers to look at the sample on my phone:

The environmental science teacher in white tells me that he thinks it’s a Stentor. Ellen and I google whilst recording and the Stentor doesn’t quite fit with the roundness of the organism we’re seeing. Later in the video, we realize that it most likely is a Vorticella, which is a bell-shaped ciliated protozoa. Their stalks contract like a coil when stimulated, which is why we saw the sporadic movements.

Here’s the video. Excuse my occasionally unscientific giddiness. I was very excited to finally identify a microorganism and all words escaped me. So, any thoughts? Do you think we’ve correctly identified this organism?
Some video-watching advice:
The first 5 minutes consists of slight confusion and panning around to find microorganisms. The middle of the video is where I start having a conversation with all of the science teachers talking to me. Scroll all the way to the near-end to watch the vorticella move.