Transmission Interferogram of Seminal Fluid

A small droplet of undiluted semen is illuminated by a green laser pointer and the resulting interferogram projected on my lab wall. I am unsure how much detail will be visible after video compression, but the effect in real-life is a fantastic light-show of slowly changing laser speckle "noise" as the spermatozoa swim around in the seminal plasma.

Individual cells are not resolved, but the bulk movement is visible if the droplet is perturbed. Semen is an ideal, easily acquirable source of liquid with motile mesoscale objects for this kind of projection experiment. Larger forms of life, like protists in pond-water may be resolvable as might spermatozoa at sufficient dilutions.

Smaller droplets increase the magnification of the system and reduce the amount of volume imaged. The droplet curvature is important to produce the projection, you can't expect to trivially trap liquid between a slide and coverslip (as would be used in a transmission compound biological microscope) and produce the same effect.

Compare to my video of sterile water: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69did7Zl-xI

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• vk2zay
• transmission
• interferogram
• interference
• semen
• seminal
• fluid
• plasma
• light-show
• laser
• pointer
• speckle

[dorinvladstefan]

You can't see de spermatozoids with a laser microscope. Their sizes are too small to see, since the projection seems to work only for organisms around 100-200 microns.

[vk2zay]

@dorinvladstefan you can't resolve their structure, but they generate fringes by their phase shift, as can clearly be seen here.

[robotking34]

Ok, I lost it when he said "easily acquirable".

[caqtv]

But I can project spunk onto my wall without using a laser.

[dorinvladstefan]

@vk2zay Maybe, but I remain sceptical, until I reproduce the experiment using diluted semen.

[eggfooyoung24]

watered down blood looks the same

[ParaglidingManiac]

too bad I don't jack off :) I would love to watch it using a microscope.

[ploper25]

fap fap fap

[antenasub]

iiiiuuuuggggghhhhh the guy speaking in the video sounds relaxed and like if he provided the sample jajjajajajaj

[shazbot996]

is that hair gel?