Sunday, May 3, 2009

Science Saturday Challenge #7

I know, it's Sunday, but I had to work all day yesterday...

Any guesses what this is a picture of?



8 comments:

Cheryl said...

Magnified Pollen?
It looks like those little pricker balls that stick to your pants when you walk through the woods. Are they those?

Kris said...

Good guess, though that isn't it. Now that you say it, they do look like pricker barbs!

Homeschool Friend said...

Wow! Tough one. I too would've guessed magnified pollen. Since that's now it, I'll go with...

dandelions?

OR

something magnified...It's definitely magnified.

Hmmmm....

I dont know!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Unknown said...

Ok...I'm going to guess a picture of swine flu viral particles. I'm probably WAY off base, lol.

Ruth in NC said...

I'm going with influenza virus.

Kris said...

Yes, indeed, it is the H1N1 flu virus! I found the picture at the CDC website.

It is a scanning electron microscope image, and though the source does not say, I imagine the magnification in somewhere near the 100,000x. Viruses are small, and the H1N1 flu is small for a virus!

SEM images are in black and white; any color images you see are artificially enhanced and are not natural colors. Here you can see the original and a color enhanced version of the image I posted.

Nice job!

Kris said...

Actually, it is a transmission electron microscope image (TEM) and not a SEM. The TEM has much more magnification, as needed to view this little critter.

Here is a science writer's blog entry comaparing types of microscopes.

Dana Leeds said...

Neat! I just saw this post today and my first guess was some type of pollen,too.:-)