SEPTEMBER, 2020
Frugally built technology to study the ocean’s microbes, and engineering for societal good.
It’s the “most stupendous snowfall,” a downward drift of “flake upon flake, layer upon layer” writes Rachel Carson in her 1951 book The Sea Around Us. This marine snow, says Stanford University biophysicist Manu Prakash, is made up of marine microorganisms, and also communities of them, that can traverse thousands of meters before they eventually die and drift to the seafloor. Measuring this marine snow and assessing these organisms’ biology involves extensive observation that might include tracking microbes over a circadian cycle. These data can help with larger questions related to biogeochemical cycles and climate change. Enter the Prakash lab’s scale-free vertical tracking microscope, also known as the hydrodynamic treadmill or the Gravity Machine…