Pond Water Under a Microscope

Medium

What is swimming in a single drop of pond water? A scoop from a local pond can hold organisms from several of the major kingdoms of life. You collect water from a pond and prepare wet-mount slides for a compound microscope. Start at low magnification and work your way up. Tiny organisms appear at higher settings, darting and drifting across the slide. Sketch at least 10 different organisms and note their size, color, and movement. Then guess which kingdom each one belongs to based on what you observe.

Hypothesis

The hypothesis is that there are five kingdoms of life living in a single drop of water.

Science Concepts Learned

Microorganisms

A single scoop from a local pond can hold organisms from several major kingdoms of life. Prepare a wet-mount slide and work up through the magnification settings on a compound microscope — tiny organisms appear, darting and drifting across the slide. Sketching at least 10 of them and noting their size, color, and movement reveals just how diverse life can be in one small drop of water.

Microscopy

A microscope's lenses let you see organisms that are invisible in open water. You prepare wet-mount slides from pond water and increase magnification to spot tiny creatures darting across the field of view. At higher settings, details like size, color, and movement patterns emerge, enough to sort organisms by kingdom.

Method & Materials

You will collect water from a pond or lake, then bring it to your microscope for observation. You will make a wet mount, which is a slide containing your sample in a solution, to observe living organisms.

You will need a bucket or 2-3 glass jars with screw tops, a compound light microscope, glass microscope slides, cover slips for slides, an eyedropper, paper and pencil, and a wagon or cart (if needed to assist you in transporting the bucket or jars of water).

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Results

After observing the water sample, you will be able to identify several kingdoms of life. You may see animals, bacteria, protists, and plants. You may also find single-celled algae with flagella in the plant kingdom.

Why do this project?

This science project is so interesting and unique because it allows students to explore the five kingdoms of life in a single drop of water. It also teaches students how to use a microscope to observe living organisms.

Also Consider

Variations of this experiment include collecting water samples from different sources, such as a river or ocean, and observing the different kingdoms of life in those samples. Another variation is to observe the kingdoms of life in a drop of saliva or a drop of blood.