Belly button science

Oct 01, 2015 • 5:56 AM 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

258posts

1177comments

41locations

Since my first recollection of the realization that I have a belly button – I have always wondered what the hell does it do. As a child, it was hard to understand that I was mechanically, metabolically and physically coupled to another human being before being a human being myself. All that was very confusing – but I could still touch and feel this belly button.
I got busy and forgot about it; until today – where I again realized I still have this belly button. I understand why I have it; but not really what are its implications. In order to explore this Microcosmos; I decided to take a simple sample from the same by just scrapping part of my belly button with a simple wet cotton swab (or a pen for that matter) – put it on the slide and observe.
This is the remarkable world of my belly button; scrapped with low mag foldscope.

Two right side images are from large skin scraps that also showed up in left. I did not closely see any swimming microorganisms. Now I will test this with the 480x lens to check – what lives in my belly button.
But what lives in your belly button – What are you waiting for – try to find out.
Cheers
Manu