Awesome Microscopic

Filmmaker Joey Shanks got his hands on an AmScope SM-4TP stereo zoom microscope and hooked it up to his Canon DSLR camera to capture some amazing images of liquids reacting. The mixtures he used included milk, soap, oil, peroxide, and alcohol, accented with glitter. Bonus points for the stop-motion animation at the start of the clip.

Ant-Man showed us what it might be like if humans could shrink to a subatomic size. That doesn’t make Epic Spaceman’s latest video any less fascinating. This amazing educational video shows our astronaut host shrinking to 1/10th of his size every 21 seconds. Along the way, he stands with a grain of sand, a tardigrade, a blood cell, and even tinier things.

Andymation is known for his creative flipbook animations. He once created a flipbook smaller than a penny, but that wasn’t good enough for Andy, so he made an even smaller one. It took some work to get the camera and lens setup right; then, he got to work drawing each tiny frame with a sharp pencil. After that came the challenge of stacking them.

Cheese can get its flavor from flavor from things like bacteria or mold. But if you enjoy the lemony flavor of French Mimolette or German Milbenkäse cheese, you’ve enjoyed a little bonus protein in the form of cheese mites. Journey to the Microcosmos explains how these tiny organisms add flavor to these cheeses.

Journey to the Microcosmos explores whether it is possible for microorganisms to spontaneously generate out of thin air. With the help of a powerful microscope and modern scientific knowledge, host Hank Green explains what’s really going on when microscopic organisms seem to show up where there was no life before.

Mark Rober and his pals made one of the largest NERF guns ever. This time, he went in the opposite direction, putting the popular toy through the shrink ray so many times it’s only visible with an atomic force microscope. After using a compliant mechanism to engineer a simplified version that can fire a dart, he worked with scientists to make NERF guns from DNA.

When you think about something being microscopic, it all seems the same size from our perspective. But this video from RED SIDE cleverly demonstrates the vast differences in the size of things we can’t see with the naked eye, from the tiniest atom to the relatively gargantuan amoeba. Also, there are way too many viruses.

Anyone can grow their own crystals with just a few household chemicals. Photographer Jens Heidler connected a Sony mirrorless camera to a Motic Panthera microscope and recorded a number of fascinating time-lapse sequences showing how crystals grow. He grew the colorful crystals using a combination of beta-alanine, vitamin C, water, and isopropyl alcohol.

After a series of heavy downpours this week, our neighborhood has lots of puddles. In a couple of days, these stagnant pools of water will be teeming with minuscule creatures. Journey to the Microcosm gets us up close and personal with some of these tiny organisms through the optics of high-power microscopes.

Go deep inside of numerous microscopic worlds with this fascinating video from Sci-Inspi. It compiles through-the-lens footage of tiny living things from a paramecium to a fruit fly’s eye to a tardigrade, accompanied by a soothing guitar soundtrack. If you enjoyed this video, be sure to check out part two.

After sharing close-up footage of Vitamin C crystals, photographer Jens Heidler of , Another Perspective has done the same with honey. This video shows what the sugar crystals in honey look when viewed through a microscope and illuminated with polarized light. How the crystals dissolve in hot water is fascinating.

Ordinary things can look extraordinary viewed through the lens of a microscope. Photographer Jens Braun shows the kind of eye-catching crystalline structures can form with just a bit of Vitamin C, water, and alcohol. He shot the images using a Sony a6300 mirrorless camera and used polarization to enhance the vibrant colors.

Filmmaker Scott Portingale and composer Gorkem Sen created this engrossing short film using macro and time-lapse photography to explore how fluids move, and chemicals react and change states. Each of its vignettes feels like a journey to a strange new world. Gorkem’s yaybahar perfectly complements the footage.

Dr. Willard Wigan MBE has an attention to detail most of us only dream of. He’s known for his infinitesimally small sculptures, which he carves using tiny tools under the lens of a microscope. WIRED’s Obsessed sat down with Willard to learn about his technique and the challenges of working at such a small scale.

(Flashing lights) This fascinating short film from Joel Penner and Anna Sigrithur uses time-lapse footage to reveal how tiny organisms spoil food, others that make it tastier through fermentation, and yet more that compost and break down dead things to fertilize the Earth for new life.

Nature show host ZeFrank offers up a detailed look at a kind of amoeba known as Dictyostelium and explores how they work. These strange microscopic organisms gobble up bacteria and other tiny things, then divide over and over to reproduce. But the weirdest part is what they do once the colony runs out of food.