Looking at my infected BLOOD using laser microscopy & crap I found around the house (sciencepic)

So after yesterday's fun with microscopes, I was left a little disappointed that it wasn't clear enough or powerful enough to see actual cells. If I did onions maybe, but it's a little classroom cliche and I wanted to see MY cells. Or just life in general, a little tic, water flea or som - water... flea, eh?

That gave me an idea. My current set up is useless for seeing life in water, so instead I went to the corner shop to find another laser pen (I need one anyway to play with my cat when his leg is better). Unfortunately they only had a weak, $1 thing, although it also has a little torch and UV light which is cool. But for this experiment, more powerful lasers are better, so I was a little let down. I could order one online but I didn't wanna wait. No harm trying anyway.

I went online to see if laser microscopes were actually a thing I could do, since it just kind of made sense after always messing around with lasers in cups and such, and it looks as easy as I thought; something that would be pretty cool in classrooms: Ridiculously simple and ridiculously fascinating. This is all I did:

I used

• My cat's medicine syringe (for single use)
• Two cups to balance the syringe on
• Various liquids
• Red laser pen (I wanted green for a realistic touch, but I guess it's basically the same)

I balanced the syringe on the cups, with my external sound card beneath just to get a bit of height like so:

I forced the 'on' button to stay on with a clip, since if you let go, it turns off - stupid design - so now I could set it up hands free. Positioning was a pain in the arse but it was worth the effort.

Then I made a drop of water squeeze out and hang from the syringe, aimed and shone the laser pointer through the drip. and onto the backdrop of my wall to create a projected image of what's going on in the water.

The results, well, I was not disappointed. The magnification is much higher than the previous set up which was perhaps 50x magnified at best, maybe 100 with both lenses but that ends up super low quality. This method on the other hand can be
2,000x magnification or more if you project onto a wall about 2 metres away and youre not limited by digital zooming.

Here's a pic:

Ok that looks pretty lame. YOU HAD TO BE THERE OK??

Well, I tried to improve things by changing to the wall closer to me. It would be a smaller image but hopefully provide more clarity:

Ok... that's just brighter. Well, you can still see microbes! All those dark blobs are some form of life or other. But it seemed apparent that the laser was impure, perhaps dust and other detritus was on the out-of-reach lens. Never mind, I can work with it.

So here's what I checked out:

• Tap water

This was surprisingly devoid of life. I couldn't even tell if it was working or not because I saw no movement, no bits of trash or anything. They say the tap water here is incredibly unsafe to drink but...

• Bottled water

I've already talked about food and drink safety scandals rampant in China, and this particular brand - nongfu - was guilty of one of those scandals so I was interested to check it out. Sure enough, there was some life in there, though not as much as I'd imagined. Still, that's the first and last time I buy that (not that anything else is going to be cleaner).

• Water from outside where there's moss growing from a constant dripping of an air conditioner above me

This was probably second coolest because there were huge blobs of mystery stuff, I guess moss, and it was kinda fun to try and spot anything alive and moving among the trash. I even found this Tonberry lurking around in the juices of the wild. Either that or an incredibly small water ant with a backpack:

• Saliva

This was super cool. It was so dense that I had to dilute it in tap water (because that was the best 'control' I had), but even then the whole projection was spiraling with activity.

• Water from cat's bowl

This was also cool because the life was still very much active, zooming around, bouncing back and forth.

• Milk

Again diluted, but otherwise boring. One or two microbes but otherwise pretty devoid. Probably a good thing? Or is that bad?

• My toe

The grand finale and by far the most awesome was my toe. For those who don't know, I've had this double ingrown, wide-angle nail problem since about 2012, and after 3 surgeries, two in China, it's just gotten worse. That being said, there's always a healthy supply of oozing goo seeping out from one of the corners.

It only makes sense, therefore, to suck some up the syringe and have a look. A little dilution in the water and, well, it was super cool. Unfortunately I saw some MONSTERS in there that floated out of shot before I could get my phone ready, so the main event is absent from this post, but still. Amazing stuff.

The pictures don't even begin to do it justice so this video is a must watch - I made it short:

I'll refrain from telling you which one is from which juice, I wouldn't want anybody refraining from drinking ever again!

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I want to try out more stuff in the future so let me know what you'd like to see, or y'know, do it yourself - all you need is a $1 laser and a gross toe.

I'm thinking about tears, pure yellow pus from infection, sweat, all the wide variety of taboo liquids that come from us disgusting human beings. Also fresh rain water.

If there's enough intrigue I could buy a pretty powerful green laser for cheap and get some much more interesting results!