Making art through a microscope

It comes in many shapes and sizes. In fact, sometimes it's so small you can't even see it. With the naked eye. Yeah, we have someone very special here today. We have a research microscopist. Hopefully I said that right. I've been practicing it, right? Sebastian Spengler here to join us to explain the science and beauty behind chemicals and substances and how you turn it into art, which I think is absolutely fascinating. So first and foremost, thank you for coming here today. And we want to get a little bit into this. I mean, what is your background to Turn science into art. It's not something people usually think about. Yeah, so I started as a biology degree in Cleveland, Ohio, moved out to Chicago, got my master's there in forensic science, and started working at a company that does primarily research through the light microscope. And part of our job doing research is to photograph this stuff too. So we have to photograph everything that we're looking at to document it for our purposes. So in doing so, I found a lot of beautiful images under the microscope. Okay, I mean, you just discovered this? Like, how did you get into this kind of art? So there's actually a small group of people around the world that do this. We're called photomicrographers, okay? And, yeah, we just try to expose the beauty that people don't get to see normally under the microscope. And this looks amazing. I mean, it's really, really beautiful because it looks like, when I first met you at an art fair, it looks like just a painting or a different form of art. It does. But when I really learned the science and you went into the details, I thought, this is amazing. And so one of the things you're going to do with us today is an experiment showing us how you take, you know, a substance or chemical and how do we get it into this? Like, how did you start off from the process? Yeah, it's really simple. So the big thing with... Photographing stuff under the microscope, it has to be thin and flat. Okay. Okay, and so in order to do that, one of the easiest ways is to melt something. To heat it till it melts, let it recrystallize, and then it'll turn to a nice thin and flat substance that we can photograph into something like this. Yeah, so it doesn't work on everything, but it works on something. So one of the most common substances I photograph is caffeine, because everybody's familiar with caffeine. So I have a little caffeine here. We've had some this morning ourselves. That's what I told you. And then we just take a little, I have a little slide over here with a little bit on there like that. And we're going to put a little cover slip on top, and then we're just going to heat this up. And this is, you know, it just requires a little bit of heating and eventually, this one's going to take a little longer, but eventually what happens is that melts and then it turns into a slide that looks like this. So you can see that there's crystals there, right? You can see the crystal material that's thin and flat now. And so then what we can do is we put it under the microscope. So this is a regular microscope. It could do the same thing and produce the same kind of images. But the big trick is we need polarizing. I was going to say, like, we look at the slide and it looks like a milky white, but then how How do we get these colors? Cause we don't see that. So we need polarizing filters, the same kind that you have in your sunglasses. One goes below the sample over here like this, and then one goes above the sample over here like that. And then what we see in those conditions is essentially nothing. So we have two of those here, they're transparent, but when they're together, we see nothing. But if we have a crystal like our caffeine or one of our other substances through the microscope over here, we can see. Some color in there, okay, so that we see those colors because of the properties of the sample under the microscope. That is so incredible. I want you to do that again towards this camera. Yeah, let's see if we can see it. We need to see how cool this is. All right, so we're showing this over here like that. I don't know if we can even see it, but if you shift it just right, we can see some of the colors inside of that lens. There it is right here in this camera. Oh, that's so neat. Okay, so that's how you do the process of it. I mean, and have you tested just an abundant amount of chemicals and substances? I've looked at a lot of stuff. Yeah, I looked at a lot of stuff. More so, it's stuff that people tend to recognize, especially for the art shows, because, you know, I used to have all these bizarre chemicals, and people were like, what is that? Now we have, like, so many things. I was going to say, what are we looking at? How do you want to guess? I'll end with this one, but this one right over here is testosterone under the microscope. Wow. And then in the front over here, We have wine crystals, so sometimes when you open the bottle of wine, you see little crystals on the cork. That's what that is there. I knew I liked that one. Yeah, see? Of course you did. And then we have the one that probably people recognize the most is the snowflake on my left over here. Yeah. Oh, okay. That's obviously not done by heating this sample up, but it's a little different process, a lot more difficult to photograph a snowflake, obviously. And then of course, one of my new favorite ones over here, this is estrogen. Okay, and the reason I brought this. I really like this one. Good. A lot of people did too because we got 13th place in the Nikon Small World Contest. Congratulations. I know. It was a big thing we were waiting for. Yeah. And your art is getting popular not only for people, you know, viewing it and you being in these contests, which is great. If someone is interested in your art and wants to purchase it, I mean, how can they do so or how can they look up? Because when I purchase stuff from you, it comes in all different shapes and sizes, right? Yeah, we have all kinds of different sizes of stuff. I have an online website. I have a web store with all my stuff on there that's currently available and everything like that. Okay. And what is your online store for someone who may be watching? That is my last name, Sporangia, S-P-A-R-E-N-G-A, photography, sporangiaphotography.com, and you'll go right to the section that says Microscope Art Store. You could have estrogen on your wall. You could have it on your wall. I know. I mean, it's a talker piece because it's abstract, but it actually means something more than just color. It's a conversation. You know, combining science and art, I think it's an amazing thing. Yeah. Thank you so much for being here with us. Thank you. Well, thanks for joining us this morning. Yeah, well, good to be here. We appreciate it. Because the kids, someone's watching this at home and they're going to want to try this. I hope so. I really hope so. Okay, they can. It's safe? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay. Just, you know. He's a fine adult supervision. If you're going to do heating with that, yeah, for sure. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. Okay, you're welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.