The little monsters in our tank (Beware: Science Pictures Inside!!!)
 

A little while back I was staring at the glass in my tank watching these bugs smaller than a pinhead bomb around the glass at a pretty good pace. A quick back of the napkin calculation said that these little buggers were running around at the equivalent of a human running 150 km/hr! (~20x their body length per second) "What are these microscopic speed demons?", I thought.

So, doing what any other normal person would do, I spent half an hour trying to catch one, dried it, gold coated it, and tossed it in a scanning electron microscope (SEM).

This is what speed-racer looks like close up!

***I did this pretty quick and half-arsed, so pardon the dried salt crystals and other junk in the pics***

http://i927.photobucket.com/albums/a...psc3c99ba6.jpg

http://i927.photobucket.com/albums/a...psa677c30a.jpg

http://i927.photobucket.com/albums/a...ps251e671b.jpg

http://i927.photobucket.com/albums/a...psa1f59081.jpg

http://i927.photobucket.com/albums/a...ps101b7a26.jpg

So cool. And to think 150 million years ago those things were the size of a VW

LIKE


Must be nice to have a SEM sitting aroun eh :razz:?

sometimes I like not knowing...very cool photos but seriously ewww...

Thats pretty cool. Wish my truck went that fast lol.

Very cool, but now I don't want to put my arms in the tank.

Hahaha. Ya, it's pretty sweet (I actually have 3 at my disposal). It's pretty fun putting random stuff in there while doing my actual work. This guy is pretty tame compared to some of the other stuff I've stuck in there.

I think next up is one of the million pods running around my tank.

That was pretty awesome...would love to see a pod up close.

Love it!

Awesome pics, u should look for more little monsters so u can take pics and post them here for us :D