Amazing images from microscopes

The Nikon Small World web site has some stunning images and videos.

Image: Growing tip of a red algae by UNC's own Dr. Nat Prunet. Go Heels!

Struggling with your grades? Fear not!

Watch the 45 seconds between 1:45 and 2:30 to see how Chemistry Nobel Laureate Marty Chalfie (of Green Fluorescent Protein fame) did in Chemistry classes in college.

 

Microns, nanometers, etc.

Powers of Ten, a classic Charles & Ray-Bernice Eames film on grasping the sizes of things from human scale out to the then-known universe, and back in to subatomic particles.

More images from Robert Hooke's Micrographia

Here's the whole book.

Hooke's book begins with an apology to the King of England, for, well, discovering things.

Hooke's methods for immobilizing some of the insects he observed were creative:

...I gave it a Gill of Brandy, or Spirit of Wine, which after a while e'en knock'd him down dead drunk, so that he became moveless...

Hooke's engraving of a head of a hoverfly, from Micrographia

My favorite of van Leeuwenhoek's letters, with a surprise ending

"Concerning the Worms in Sheeps Livers, Gnats, and Animalcula in the Excrements of Frogs" (van Leeuwenhoek, 1700)

In this letter, he describes finding microscopic life in frog poop. I especially like the surprise ending in the last 3 paragraphs – starting, "On the fifth day the Frog had dung'd again...." Scientific papers never end the way this one did.

Google Doodle from van Leeuwenhoek's 384th birthday

A popular book about cell biology

A great, vivid exploration of some fascinating topics in cell biology. See the "Read sample" button on the left side of this page to read parts of the book now. Also available as an audiobook.