Paramecium dividing - in polarized light

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piotr
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Paramecium dividing - in polarized light

Post by piotr »

This picture of Paramecium I took with crossed polars. The little birefringent crystals found inside a cell consist of uric acid, calcium oxalate, calcium carbonate, calcium phosphate, amino acids and other substances (Wichterman, 1953).

Image

Here I added a home-made retardation plate:

Image

25x/0.60 objective, Sony DSC-V1.
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Frez
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Post by Frez »

Oh that's beautiful! I'm blown away by this. All of those crystals...that's amazing. Very, very nice! Congrats!

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Kenv
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Post by Kenv »

Looks live a far-off galaxy photographed by the Hubble, beautiful Piotr.
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Charles Krebs
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Post by Charles Krebs »

Really nice piotr. Polarized light is amazing with a microscope, too bad it sucks up so much light. Imagine all the other things that are going on right under our eyes but were just not looking in the proper way to see them. You should try a few shots with the polarizers not quite as close to extinction as well. They are all interesting but different.

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piotr
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Post by piotr »

Thank you, guys! :-)

The first picture is a bit overprocessed, I will replace it later.

Charlie, yes, the effect with partially crossed polars is very nice, too. I will be doing more experiments.

Apparently - there are protozoans rich in micro-crystals, others don't include birefringent crystals at all. I think Vorticella is another interesting example.
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Ken Ramos
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Post by Ken Ramos »

I am all for the Vorticella Piotr. Lets see one. Awesome images here of the Paramecium, great captures. :D
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Garry DeLong
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Post by Garry DeLong »

Uric acid is especially beautiful. Its characteristic rainbow appearance under polarized light was useful for us medical lab types to confirm uric acid crystals in various lab specimens.
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