Fun Science - World in Pond Water

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There is a Whole Word in just a Drop of Water

Explore microscopic life in a local pond, marsh, or stream. A cup of water can contain millions of microorganisms.

Simple Way to Learn about Microscopic Organisms and Microscopes 

Watching the tiny little creatures in a drop of water can be endlessly fascinating. So many tiny forms of life that humans never knew about before microscopes were invented only about 400 years ago.

What do you need?
Jar of Water - Take a jar to a local pond, marsh, or stream and fill it with water.
Microscope - A basic compound microscope is all you need.
Slides and Slide Covers- Most microscopes come with some blank slides or you can buy them separately. For this you will need well slides, these have a small dip in the center.
Eye Dropper - For dropping a tiny bit of water onto your slide.

For help using a microscope either look in your microscopes instruction guide or check one of the links under How to Use a Microscope Links.

Pond Water Links 

Pond Study Science Project
Summer is a great time to learn about and observe the tiny creatures that live in lakes, ponds, or puddles. To collect some specimens, scoop a cup or so of pond water into a jar.
ExplorA-Pond
Biology of ponds

Books on Microscopic Life 

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How to Use a Microscope Links 

How to Use a Microscope
Get quick tips on how to use a compound microscope, see a diagram of the parts of a microscope, and find out how to clean and care for your microscope.
Microscope
How to use a microscope
How to Prepare a Microscope Slide
One of the most basic parts of working with a microscope is preparing a slide. The microscope slide holds the specimen you will be examining through the microscope. In order to see your specimen clear...
Introductory Microscope Experiments
You have a microscope--now what? With the directions in this Teaching Tip you can get started right away making your own microscope slides! Make your own prepared slide with mounts of your choice of specimen on glass microscope slides. This is a great microscope activity for junior high to high school age. Or make simple slides out of household items, a project that works well for elementary age kids and can be used with both compound and stereo microscopes.

Video on Using a Microscope 

How to Correctly Use a Microscope

In order to teach 7th graders how to act while in the science lab, this 7th grade teacher made her own intructional videos on how to use equipment and act in class. Check out the RIGHT and WRONG ways to act

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Microscopes 

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Slides 

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Identifying Microscopic Life 

Common Microscopic Organisms

Protists:
Protists are single celled eukaryotic microorganisms (eukaryotic cells are those with a nucleus). Protists used to all be classified as a Kingdom but more recently that classification has proven to be incorrect, scientists are still working out where various types of protists such as protozoa (animal-like), algae (plant-like), and fungus-like protists belong in the tree of life.
Flagellated Protozoa - These protozoa move using a flagellum, a long tail-like structure.
Amoebas - These protozoa move and capture food by changing thier body shape, reaching out psudopods (meaning false feet).
Ciliates - These protozoa are covered with tiny hair-like structures call cilia, they move by "rowing" with the cilia.
Algae - Algae are plant-like single celled organism that sometimes live in groups. They produce their food using photosynthesis just like plants (in fact many forms of algae are sometimes classified as plants).
Diatoms - Diatoms are a very interesting class of single celled algae. They form hard, rigid, cell wall out of silica (the same stuff a lot of sand and glass is made from).

Animals:
Crustaceans -The crustaceans are a large group of arthropods. Lobsters, crabs, shrimp, and barnacles are familiar crustaceans but many are also microscopic. Most crustaceans live in the water, either fresh water or salt water. They have segmented bodies and are the closest relatives of insects.
Worms - The name worm is used for many unrelated animals that evolved a slender elongated body shape.
Insect larva - Many insects lay their eggs in water, when they hatch these larva usually look nothing like the adult insects.
Rotifers - Rotifers are microscopic multicellular animals, and among the most ancient and primitive of all animals.

Plants
You are likely to see many tiny aquatic plants in your pond water, along with broken bits of larger plants such as leaves and roots, dependign on the time of year you many also see tiny seeds or pollen.

Bacteria:
Bacteria are the oldest known forms of life and comprise their own Kingdom. Most are barely visible under a microscope but some are large enough to see.

Links About Microscopic Organisms 

PROTIST PARK - ENTRANCE
Article of introduction to the kingdom of the protists.
B U G A S A U R U S E X P L O R U S
What's all this about bugs in our streams?  Water bugs
DLC-ME | The Microbe Zoo
The Microbe Zoo is an educational resource about ecology and microbiology. The Microbe Zoo includes information about microbes and the habitats they dwell in as well as dozens of images of microbes. Visit the Microbe Zoo and sample microbial foods at the Snack Bar, learn about microbes and compostin

Videos Through a Microscope 


Life in a drop of Pond Water

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Microscopic Life in close-up

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MicroscopicWorld2

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Microscopic animals

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Microorganisms

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Volvox Moving In Pond Water

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Hydra

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The Protist , Protozoa, Algae and Fungus-like protists

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MicroscopicWorld1

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Cells 

The cell is the structural and functional unit of all known living organisms. It is the smallest unit of an organism that is classified as living, and is often called the building block of life.Cell Movements and the Shaping of the Vertebrate Body in Chapter 21 of Molecular Biology of the Cell fourth edition, edited by Bruce Alberts (2002) published by Garland Science. The Alberts text discusses how the "cellular building blocks" move to shape developing embryos. It is also common to describe small molecules such as amino acids as "molecular building blocks". Some organisms, such as most bacteria, are unicellular (consist of a single cell). Other organisms, such as humans, are multicellular. (Humans have an estimated 100 trillion or 1014 cells; a typical cell size is 10 µm; a typical cell mass is 1 nanogram.) The largest known cell is an unfertilized ostrich egg cell.

In 1835 before the final cell theory was developed, a Czech Jan Evangelista Purkyn? observed small "granules" while looking at the plant tissue through a microscope. The cell theory, first developed in 1839 by Matthias Jakob Schleiden and Theodor Schwann, states that all organisms are composed of one or more cells. All cells come from preexisting cells. Vital functions of an organism occur within cells, and all cells contain the hereditary information necessary for regulating cell functions and for transmitting information to the next generation of cells.

The word cell comes from the Latin cellula, meaning, a small room. The descriptive name for the smallest living biological structure was chosen by Robert Hooke in a book he published in 1665 when he compared the cork cells he saw through his microscope to the small rooms monks lived in."... I could exceedingly plainly perceive it to be all perforated and porous, much like a Honey-comb, but that the pores of it were not regular .. these pores, or cells, .. were indeed the first microscopical pores I ever saw, and perhaps, that were ever seen, for I had not met with any Writer or Person, that had made any mention of them before this. . ." ? Hooke describing his observations on a thin slice of cork. Robert Hooke

Links About Cells 

Home of CELLS alive!
A visual tour of cells, bacteria, viruses and their interaction with one another.
HowStuffWorks "How Cells Work"
The human body is composed of about 10 trillion cells. Everything from reproduction to infections to repairing a broken bone happens down at the cellular level. Find out all about cells.
What is a Cell
NCBI creates public databases, conducts research in computational biology, develops software tools for analyzing genome data, and disseminates biomedical information
Science Online Cells
Science lessons at various grade levels
On the evolution of cells ? PNAS
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of
America

Photos of Microscopic Organisms 

Daphnia magna (Water Flea) by SewerDoc (On a Short Flickr Break)

A microscopic crustacean from a sample of pond water. Dark field illumination p...

diatome from pond water with hay by megamommatron

this is a diatome, a type of plant life. EXCITING!

copepod nauplius by aisha c.

This is an immature form of a tiny organism called a copepod that lives in the w...

Amoebas by truan

Microscopic amoebas at 100x (bird bath water)

amoeba  by truan

at 100x zoomed a bit

muggenlarf by Wontolla65

Chironomid larva from sweet water. Microscopic view

Ciliated Protozoa - The Movie by rivadock4

Two stalked protozoans from small farm pond. See them extend and contract their...

Epistylis 5 by SewerDoc (On a Short Flickr Break)

A phase contrast photomicrograph of a stalked ciliate (Epistylis) growing in a f...

vorticella monilata by Jan&paul

ciliate protozoan

Vorticella 3 by SewerDoc (On a Short Flickr Break)

A phase contrast photomicrograph of a stalked ciliate (Vorticella) growing in a ...

zooming cilliate enhanced by nebarnix

HAH GOT YOU! Very lucky shot at this magnification! heavy crop into a 40x phase...

enhanced budding paramecium by nebarnix

budding paramecium under phase contrast illumination.

Epistylis 6 by SewerDoc (On a Short Flickr Break)

A phase contrast photomicrograph of a stalked ciliate (Epistylis) growing in a f...

enhanced phase paramecium by nebarnix

Maybe I overdid the contrast on this one, but I really really love how I managed...

Ciliate by SewerDoc (On a Short Flickr Break)

A phase contrast photomicrograph of a ciliate growing in a food processing waste...

Paramecium, 100X by sciencestuff.com

Acineta sp. by invertebrados1ufc

Protozo%uFFFDrio do Filo Alveolata Subfilo Ciliophora (Ciliados) observado em amostr...

Euglena by Alysaurus

These guys usually like to hang out in small standing bodies of water. They're g...

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Lab Notes 

Leave you comments, questions, etc.

AndrewGreen wrote...

I do explore pond life in my own pond. With this lens you have given me another way of looking at life within my pond. Great lens. Thank you.

ReplyPosted May 30, 2009

lakeerieartists wrote...

This is great! Would be perfect for a report.

ReplyPosted November 25, 2008

lakeerieartists wrote...

This is great! Would be perfect for a report.

ReplyPosted November 25, 2008

Noadi wrote...

in reply to Fisherman_Mike That's the best compliment I could get for this lens. Thanks you.

ReplyPosted November 25, 2008

Fisherman_Mike wrote...

Very nicley done ^5 had my daughter use it for a report in school. Very nice keep up the great work.

ReplyPosted November 25, 2008

 
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Cell Models 

Ein-O Science BioSigns Plant Cell

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Ein-O Science BioSigns Animal Cell

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Ein-O Science BioSigns Bacteria

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