Glass Microbiological Art

[browngirl]

I love glass art, and also science-based art, so this article caught my eye despite its unfortunate inaccuracies (since corrected): "The Unsettling Beauty of Lethal Pathogens" is about Luke Jerram's beautiful and informative glass models of pathogenic microorganisms. Most of them are viruses, so he chose to make them colorless because viruses, being smaller than the wavelengths of visible light, don't really have a color; I'm glad he made all of them colorless, though, even the bacteria and protists, because their transparent clarity adds to both their beauty and their informativeness. I really hope to get to see some of these in person one day.

Comments

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

Cool! I'm biased toward free-swiming protozoans, but I agree that glass is the perfect medium to represent them. And, well, most microorganisms are pretty much colorless. Even the brightly colored ones tend to have just a few colored organelles.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

*nod* Now you've reminded me of the first time I saw a plant cell under a microscope. I was shocked at how concentrated the chloroplasts were and how colorless the rest was.