Me and my daughter found a butterfly on the road that passes by our house, and my daughter (6) was curious about what makes a butterfly fly. We have a cheap X200 microscope at home, so we decided to find out...
The general mechanical structure of the wing at low magnification and back-lighting...
X50 magnification: Close up of 'veins' and white spots on the butterfly wings...
The color variation and perfect alignment of scales is amazing...
Bottom-lighting without top-lighting...
The wing and scale structure reminded me of a computer program continuously looping...
Maximum zoom, Captain!
Let's scrape off some butterfly scales and take a look...
This is the 'powder' that you get on your fingers from touching butterfly wings...
That's cool, dad. That's cool.
Hope y'all enjoy!