Every time I go to the dentist’s Homepage , they always complain to me about how I’m getting lots of plaque buildup and how I need to floss once a day (even though I do…). I happen to eat quite a bit, and as a result, whenever I happen to go floss at night, I often end up taking out large amounts of plaque. With a foldscope handy, I decided to take a closer look at what exactly growing in my mouth.

With a clean toothpick, I scraped out copious amounts of plaque from my teeth. In particular, in line with my observations during my bedtime routine, I aimed for, and obtained the bulk of my sample from areas of my teeth lining the gums. I transferred this sample to the microscope slide dry (without the addition of any water) and spread it out by dropping the cover slip onto the slide/sample. The photos were taken using my Samsung S9 pressed against the eyepiece with the light source that came with the kit illuminating the sample from behind.

In the pictures below, there is a very dense packing of bacteria covering every observable space. Although the pictures are a bit blurry, I observed directly that the bacteria were mostly round. Doing some research, I found that the most common bacteria in dental plaque was cocci bacterium S. mutans which was in line with the round shape I observed (although it’s impossible to tell if the observed microbes were S. mutans or some other species). In one of the pictures, I also observed some pockets of water bubbles. Since no additional water was added while preparing the slide, I concluded that those were likely regions of spit intermixed with my plaque.