Micro Fairy at UCMerced ponds

Sep 22, 2017 • 10:19 PM UTC

Unknown Location

140x Magnification

Microorganisms

Manu Prakash

I am a faculty at Stanford and run the Prakash Lab at Department of Bioengineering at Stanford University. Foldscope community is at the heart of our Frugal Science movement - and I can not tell you how proud I am of this community and grassroots movement. Find our work here: http://prakashlab.stanford.edu

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I had fantastic day working with students , undergrads, local high school students – teaching and testing foldscope. We had around 60 participants with lots of high school students from local areas. I am
personally inspired to meet the students; and really excited to see what they share and post with the community.
Happy to say that everyone finished making the scopes in first 20 minutes and we moved to imaging.

We collected water from a nearby pond. I noticed something big (a crayfish) and something strange. Zoom in and look carefully at flashes of light coming from the surface of the pond. It was some animal bobbing its head really fast – up and down. I thought it might be a fish or a frog; it’s incredibly fast as it breaks the surface and dives back in.