• Question: @mark what do microbes look like

    Asked by anon-176622 to Mark on 20 Jun 2018.
    • Photo: Mark Kirkwood

      Mark Kirkwood answered on 20 Jun 2018:

      Hey, nice question!

      Well, a “microbe” can be a number of things, but let’s just consider bacteria for now!
      A bacterium (i.e. just one) wouldn’t like anything at all if you were just looking with your eyes. The average bacterium is about a couple of micrometres long. That’s around one 500th of a millimetre! However, they look sort of like a little bean, magnified under the microscope.

      Lots of them might have flagella (like little hairs coming out of their bodies).
      You’ll also see other bits and pieces, like extra layers around the outside of them, or extra bits inside of them.

      They usually hang around in groups, and depending on the type of bacterium they will arrange themselves in lots of different ways, like in long strings, or in bunches like grapes etc.

      You can find a picture and lots more info on the wiki page here:
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacteria#Morphology

      But bacteria are so varied that you can see all sorts of shapes, sizes, arrangements, extra bits. It’s a really exciting world to explore!

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