Clean as a (pig) pen

Almost three years ago I posted about the fantasy of our Platonic perception of the world - you might want to watch this interesting TED talk for some insight into how it works in the brain.

 

If you look around yourself now, though... most probably you won't see aphids or any other macroscopic animal crawling around you (even though there's almost certainly a spider within a couple of meters from you...).

 

What about stuff you can't even see?

 

The new camera's super macro mode begs poking around at stuff, since the camera can clearly see what I can't. This is one of today's experiments, in super macro and pushing the focal length down to almost zero.

 

To the naked eye, this ball pen looks clean. In reality, it's filthy, all covered in stuff. (After seeing this onscreen, I looked again and, much as I tried, I couldn't see any of this gunk with my own eyes.)

 

There are mites that are smaller than those bits of junk on the ball pen. Those mites are huge compared to the bacteria and fungi they feed on...

 

When was the last time you put your pen (or pencil) in your mouth? ;)

 

(Bigger gets even better.)

Done