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The Top 10 Micro-Photos of 2021

2021-09-17 · list · Hank · 3:58 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Science & nature · mode: Curiosity & trivia · tags: timely hook

Hank, one of five judges of the 2021 Nikon Small World photomicrography competition, counts down its top ten images, from a butterfly wing to a southern live oak leaf, and says the contest is a reminder of how amazing the world, our tools for observing it and its observers are.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Hank judged the Nikon Small World competition with four experts: technique, beauty, story

  • ★★★ Hank was put in a room with four other judges to judge the Nikon Small World competition of photomicrography, beautiful pictures made with microscopes, weighing technique, beauty and story. — 00:00:02

00:00:39 — The top ten micro-photos of 2021, from a butterfly wing to an oak leaf

  • ★★ Number 10 is a butterfly wing: there were many butterfly wings, which are amazing, but this one's composition, with a huge brown vein and one misplaced scale, made the top 10. — 00:00:39
  • ★★ Number 9, which Hank fought for, is a daphnia, a tiny restless crustacean; the sharp, colorful image shows it covered in what he thinks are vorticella, single-celled filter feeders, with baby daphnia inside. (hedged) — 00:00:50
  • ★★ The eighth-placed cross-section of a mouse intestine reminds the judges that anatomy-textbook diagrams are simplifications; fluorescence microscopy shows how the intestine maximizes surface area to increase nutrient absorption. — 00:01:13
  • ★★ The judges were pleased by beautiful images of things people find disgusting, such as number 7, a tick's head, and number 5, a housefly's proboscis, which they loved more the longer they looked. — 00:01:28
  • ★ Number 6 shows the blood vessels of a mouse's brain, which Hank likes most as a piece of art he would hang on his wall. — 00:01:35
  • ★★ Number 4 is a single sensory neuron of an embryonic rat: unlike oversimplified diagrams with a couple dozen branches, neurons can have thousands of dendrites connecting to tens of thousands of cells. — 00:01:55
  • ★★ Number 3 is the leg claw of a louse: its tracheae, the holes it breathes through, look like the wormholes Bill and Ted fly through, and the whole image looks like a galaxy. (playful) — 00:02:11
  • ★★ The second-placed image shows neurons placed on either side of a barrier with tiny channels: the nuclei could not pass, but the axons did and meshed into what looks like a science-fiction megastructure. — 00:02:30
  • ★★★ The number 1 image is a leaf, Hank believes the underside of a southern live oak leaf: a stack of over 200 images focused on different planes, showing stomata in purple, trichomes in white and veins in blue. (hedged) — 00:03:04
  • ★★ Hank says the winner, an ordinary oak leaf, completely reshapes his understanding of something so simple: alive, complex and mysterious beyond what he imagined. — 00:03:23

00:03:28 — Thanks to Nikon Small World and the judges; a reminder of how amazing the world and its observers are

  • ★ Hank points viewers to nikonsmallworld.com for the many other images, saying something like a hundred images received some distinction. (hedged) — 00:03:33
  • ★★★ Hank says the competition reminds him how amazing the world is, how amazing our tools for observing it are, and how amazing the people are who observe it in all its ways. — 00:03:45

In the description and comments

  • ★★ The description says the judges started with thousands of images and worked a full two days to pick the winners, calling it an honor to take part. — video description
  • ★ The description notes the competition also had a video portion, which Hank may talk about sometime. (hedged) — video description
  • ★★ In a comment Hank says the subjects are not really that colorful: techniques enhance colors or reveal unseen ones, many using fluorescence, where UV light makes a sample re-emit a different color. — creator comment
  • ★ Asked in a comment how he got the judging gig, Hank says the competition just reached out to him. — video description

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Nikon Small World · photomicrography

Also: Works: Bill & Ted

Concepts: butterfly · Daphnia · fluorescence microscope · Microscope · neuron · Quercus virginiana · science fiction · Vorticella · wormhole

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