Amoeba huddled in one place

They are very cute and fascinating.

They don’t really have particular shape which means they look like a jelly. They can change their body from solid state to liquid state and vice versa. If they want to move foward, first, their cytoplasm inside the cell flows towards front. When the cytoplasm arrives to the sides, then the cytoplasm becomes solid again.

They don’t have face, arms, or legs or anything such like other animals. They, however, make several long fake feet and slowly move with them. Their feet are called pseudopodia.

I wondered how they knew where the pray was, so I looked up on the internet. At first, before looking up on the internet, I thought they were guessing, not knowing that it is there. But on the internet, it said they knew it by spreading chemicals, which, bounces off the body of the prey. After detecting the position of it, they develope pseudopods to make a circle around it and capture it. Then they slowly digest it.

A Giant Paramicium

I was looking at a gigantic paramecium. It had cilia all over its body. The cilia are to keep it moving. They're very thin so it's hard to see them.

It had two contractile vacuoles which were pumping like a heart. They are to pump the water. It was sucking the water to get bacteria - just like a vorticella! The water went right over the other side.

What was more amusing was that we could actually see the inside of it moving.

I love it.

Vorticella

I spent a lot of time looking at a mysterious creature near the dead of daphnia(water flea). But I couldn’t find out the name of it. It looked like a bell which was alive. At last, I found out the name. It was a vorticella.

This had a small propeller kind of thingy on its round edge to suck water. It was eating small bacteria and when bacteria did come, it covered its mouth very quickly, then getting to its normal bell shape, propelling to suck water again.

I love the way it moved its propeller. It was so cute. The better thing about it was that it clasped its lid so quickly that I jumped every time it did it.

I could see its inside because it was transparent. They had about 4 circles inside. I love its fabulous looking creature.

Colpidium and other small creatures

I was wishing to see water bacteria. I got some water from the bottle and watched the bacteria.

Inside was full of small, tiny germs! The one that I could see most clearly was small paramecium which were named Colpidium. There were lots of colpidium and they were sucking the water to eat germs. The water went out.

I was kind of wishing that the colpidium was eating lots of germs because it fascinated me. But on the other hand, I was sorry for the germs.

The colpidium was transparent and was moving so quickly. I was disappointed by the fact that I couldn't see the inside of it and the fact that it was moving so fast that we had to wait until there was not much water to swim. I kept on shouting "Stop moving and let me look at you in peace!!!" but the colpidium wasn't listing.

I had a lot of fun watching them.

Water Fleas

I went to Kew garden to get pond water. I was so excited that I couldn't wait until tommorow. So I started to watch living things in the water as soon as I came back home.

When I looked at water fleas under the microscope, I could see the organs of them. They were brown and their shapes were irregular. Their digestive organ was like red earthworm and their legs were as long as the witch's nail.

I could also figure out that the fleas were breathing because the water flew away whenever the fleas breathed out.

If you put the fleas in the water, you might think those water fleas are cute, but, if you look closely on the microscope, they look fascinating rather than cute.

They are cute-looking creature and I would prefer you to look at these!

The fleas were most clear when I used dark ground illumination.

Bacteria in dad's mouth

Today I was about to sleep when my dad sneaked into my dark bedroom and played with my microscope! So I asked my dad "What's up?" My dad explained that he was looking for bacteria in his mouth. He didn't even brush his teeth to watch them!

I can't even EXPLAIN how I felt, they were hopping like mad and I felt disgusted. But with great courage, I captured it in the middle of the night, exactly at 11 o' clock.

Today, my dad used phase contrast illumination for the first time and let me know how to use it.

오늘 막 잠이 들려고 할 때, 아빠가 깜깜한 내 방에 몰래 숨어들어 오셨다. 그러더니 내 현미경을 가지고 놀고 있는 것이 아닌가? 그래서 아빠에게 "무슨 일이에요?"라고 물었다. 아빠는 아빠 입속의 세균들을 찾고 있다고 하였다. 아빠는 그것들을 관찰하려고 이도 닦지 않았단다!

나는 내가 어떻게 느꼈는지 조차 설명할 수 없다. 입속 세균들은 미친 듯이 날뛰었고 나는 구역질이 날 지경이었다. 그러나 나는 용기를 내어 한밤 중에 사진을 찍었다. 정확히 밤 11시였다.

오늘 아빠가 위상차조명을 처음으로 사용하였고, 나는 아빠로 부터 사용법을 배울 수 있었다.

My presentation - all about plants

For English homework,we had to prepare a presentation. For mine, I wrote All About Plants. Here's what I wrote:

Flower

A flower is a part of a plant where insects and wind can carry the pollen to germinate. Flowers are beautiful because they need to attract insects. The petals do those work. The pollens which is on the anther, is actually stuck between two balloons. The balloons help to let the pollen fly easily. The pollen flies away and lands on the stigma, there's a tube and the pollen goes in. In the end. it lands on something sticky, and performs a seed. This all happens in the ovary.


leaves and stems

Leaves are the part of a plant where they get the sunlight and do photosynthesis. If you look closely, you can see lines going through- they are the veins. Leaves are green because of the chlorophyll it contains. But in autumn, the green gets duller. Stems are the part of a plant where it passes things like water, minerals and sugar. It can support the leaves, flowers or fruits. Sometimes when a plant is big enough like a tree, you call the stem trunk.


Seeds and fruits


Seed is like an egg for the animals. The seed is kept in the ovary of the mother plant then it flies away. The mother will make sure that the plant goes as far away as possible. The fruit can be used to put the nutrients into the soil. They can be used when an animal came and ate it, and excreted the seed. The fruit is usually nice coloured to attract insects and animals.

More facts

Edible mushrooms are a best known as fungi. Ceps or Porcini mushrooms are wild mushrooms found in woodland. They are famous for being delicious. Some stems are special. They are underground and they have bulbs like onions. They are stems covered in leaves. If sugar made by all the plants in the world was gathered in one place, in three years, the pile would be bigger than mountain Everest. The biggest fungi in the world is in Michigan. It was 150,000 square metres of soil. It is approximately 10,000 kilograms. The biggest difference between plants and animals is that plants have cell walls and animals don't.

Onion cells and yeasts

I observed onion cells and yeasts.

We started with onion cells. Firstly, I got an onion from the kitchen and cut a thin piece out. Next I placed it on a slide, then dyed it. We finally made three preparats for my borther, my teacher and me. My brother's was best.

It looked amazing when we watched it. We magnified it by 10x60/0.85. We could see the diamond-shaped cells with a round nucleus, clear cell wall, some encloplasmic ricups etc. The nuclear was redder than the other parts of a cell.

We had a quick break and continued our experiments with yeasts.

The way we made our preparats was same as making the onion cells exept that we had to melt it and put the water on it.

We looked inside, but what a pity! We could only see small dots! Even by 600 times! It was a real shame, but we pictured it anyway.

I love the onion cells!

Cheek Cells & Potato Starch Grains

I learned about cheek cells and potato starch grains.

First, I started with the cheek cells. It's easy for a beginner. All you have to do is to grab something to scratch your cheek(I uesed a fork), then scratch your inside part of your cheek. Get a slide, then put some water on it. Put the cell inside the water. After that, put dye. Then the coverslip. Actually, I've done quite well...

I did it on the magnification of 10x10. It wasn't as great as I thought. It was in all kinds of shapes but mostly circles. It was done in two circles, the outer one and the inner one. The outer one was covered in spots and the inner one was darker.

I pictured it too. It was my first time to picture, so it was fun.

I had a quick break and got ready for the potato starch grains. I got a potato and peeled off - this was only a part of the potato - next, scratched the inner part. I made a slide and looked into the microscope. But, oh dear, I only saw a black dot!!! I was looking for the cell but unluckily I realized that it was only the starch grains, I was disappointed but still, pictured it.