Label: Photomicrography
February 21, 2014
What’s Up with the Smiley Face?
Earlier this week I posted a photograph of a blade of grass as seen under an electron microscope. The structure of the cells looks like smiley faces. This prompted a number of my readers to wonder how this could be. Or as Josephine from Shanghai put it:
I wanted to ask you that why are there smiley faces on the blade of grass and how?
It’s simple, Josephine. I told a joke to the blade of grass just before it went under the microscope.
Kidding! 
They really aren’t smiley faces, of course. This is just how a the cellular structure of a blade of grass looks under a microscope. But when we humans see it, based on our own experiences and what we know, we see a smiley face.
I wrote a book called OUT OF SIGHT that is all about amazing things that are too small to be seen by the human eye. The photographs are quite extraordinary and you can see them because the eBook is a free sample book on StarWalk Kids Media - that’s the website for my eBook company. You can try out the book and see lots of these kinds of fascinating microscopic photographs at this link: Out of Sight. I think you’ll be amazed by what you see!
Posted by: Seymour Simon
June 30, 2010
Bug Eyes Looking at You
Every year, Nikon hosts a photomicrography competition called "Small World." ("Photomicrography" is in our Science Dictionary if you’d like to look it up!). Wired.com just published six incredible super-closeups of bug eyes (like this one, which is the eye of a common house fly). Click on the link and check these out - they are both creepy and really gorgeous.
Posted by: Liz Nealon
