Took some old makeup from Rom&nd to view under the microscope! Didn’t expect it to look so beautiful! This makeup contains mica, iron oxides (to give a reddish color), titanium, silica, and many other minerals that give the makeup a shiny appearance under polarized light microscopy! There are many structures that don’t light up under polarized light- those could be microplastics. Cosmetics are full of microplastics simply as fillers or from the packaging process! #microscope #microscopy #microco

I have a culture of roughly 300 tardigrades, or water bears. I an keeping them in spring water and regularly feeding them with chlorella algae. I wanted to play around with polarized light to really highlight the stylets of the water bear. The glowing structures in the water bear in the shape of a “V” are thr stylets the animal uses to pierce food to eat. The first clip shows the tardigrade on the left try to bite the one on the right. Polarization microscopy allows us to clearly see the structu