Single-Celled Organisms Under A Compound Microscope From Amazon

 This picture and videos I'm about to share are actually from a couple days ago, but I'm just now getting around to actually getting all the videos uploaded via YouTube. I don't know why Blogger makes it so difficult to upload a functioning video, but it's nearly impossible. 

Anyway, I went kinda crazy the first two days I had this microscope - so much so that my eyes and head are hurting from constantly looking into the extremely bright LED light. I mean, it's my own fault and once the new wears off I'll be good to go. It's just all very fascinating to me. I feel like I've looking at everything around the house and some things outside. 

There's still a BIG part of me that hates that I bought it and spent the money on it. I mean, it was one of the cheaper microscopes (under $90), but there's still lingering guilt. I'm extremely cheap and feel like it's my life's mission to hoard every dollar, but I know I can't be that way all the time. Still, I don't like spending money on myself, it just makes me feel weird.

I bought myself some new earring a couple weeks ago and feel the same way. Not so much now because I wear them all the time, but I still have the mentality of, "Oh, but what if we need that money for something more important?" I don't know, that's just the way I'm hardwired now. Back in my late teens/early 20s it was a completely different story. I made decent money, more money than I had ever made before and I was only freshly 18! I spent it just as fast as I could make it.

I'll always remember my gran telling LaVaughn and I both to put half of our check in the bank each week and save it. Of course that was nonsense to us at the time because we were young and stupid, but now... I get it. 

Okay, I'm gonna stop rambling and share the pic and videos. Hope you enjoy!

This is the best (and only) pic of the unicelled organism that I could get.

And here are the videos:

              

              

              

National Optical 40X-1000X Compound Microscope

 I couldn't really think of a better title and since that's exactly what this post is going to be about, I just decided to go with it. I was browsing videos on TikTok weekend before last when I stumbled upon a random video of single-celled organisms (or unicelled organisms). It wasn't anything crazy, just some really awesome videos of the micro-creatures. One of the top comments was someone asking what the best microscope was and the OP replied with, "Any good compound microscope". After that, my search began. 

Microbiology is something I've always been fascinated with. I still remember back in the early 90s when I was like 4 years old. I was staying with my grandma when her house was behind her daughter, my aunt Eva. Well my aunt's son was in town for a week or so on leave from the Army and he brought a lot of his belongings from his house. He told us kids to pick something out that we wanted out of his overly packed car. Well there in the backseat sat a microscope and that's what I had my heart set on. Since I was the youngest of the kids I was the last to get to pick something out, so naturally one of the older kids snatched the microscope and I never got to even touch it. 

I've only ever used microscopes in school and we really only ever got to use premade slides. And it was school - which I always hated - so I never really got to enjoy myself. I really feel like I've overshared, my apologizes. Long story short, I researched (cheap) microscopes on Amazon for a couple days and ended up finding an awesome review and unboxing of one on YouTube and that's the one I went with. 

It arrived in the mail today and I went nuts! I kid you not, after all the animals were fed and things were done for the day, I started messing around with it and didn't stop for hours. Max has a kiddie pool outside with water in it, so that's where I got my first sample. It was amazing! I saw so, so many little single-celled organisms... it was just amazing. I also tested out sink water and filtered water from the fridge to see if there were any little creepers - thank god there wasn't any. 

I have a few videos on my phone that I'm going to try and upload. Since I didn't have a specific attachment for my phone, the videos are a little wonky, but I did eventually figure it out. 

This is the tiny amount of water that I used.

This is how it came packaged. It was actually very nice.

Here's the video: