Monday 5 October 2020

glass microbiology

Via two of our favourite bloggers, Nag on the Lake and Everlasting Blรถrt, we are directed towards the exacting model that Luke Jerram and his team of glassblowers have created of the strain of coronavirus known as SARS-CoV-2 as a homage to global effort to contain and combat the global COVID-19 pandemic and to help scientists and non-scientists alike to visualise and focus their efforts on an artefact magnified by a factor of two million. There is an educational video and a gallery of previous sculptures of pathogens and pestilence at the link above, and whilst not on the same subject, these creations made us recall the glass specimens made as museum pieces of deep sea life that would have disintegrated on surfacing but we thought also speaks to the inspirational value of this heuristic that is as much art as it is utilitarian.