AndyGadget's Blog (8)

This week's bout features Maizie the Physarum polycephalum against Larry the Lichen (heritage unknown).  Larry is the heavyweight and the younger of the two at a mere 250 million years but it's thought the agility and experience of Maizie (600 million years) will win through.  This could turn nasty.    

Ding ding!…

There is a paper detailing how a slime mould can be guided by loading it with ferromagnetic particles and steering it with magnets, but I was wondering whether an un-modified physarum could detect a magnetic field.

I ran a set of 4 time-lapses using a strong magnet (top of picture) and starting conditions as shown in the photo so heading towards the pole would give it a guaranteed food reward.  I would expect the slime to preferentially set off towards the pole if it 'learned' that…

Just starting off another time lapse.

I mentioned before that the Physarum seemed to take a long time to get going on the art paper substrate I was using.  It did speed up after a bit and I was wondering if it had begun to disregard an unpleasant substance in the paper.  The experiment I've just started is to see if this may be the case.

Slime mould A is from the previous run on the art paper.

Slime mould B has only been exposed to clean kitchen tissue.…

This is my Physarum Polycephalum exploring its Petri dish over the space of 3 days.  One second of video time equals 30 minutes of real time.

Maizie's Travels.

This is a 3D printed template for cutting an 85mm disc to sit in the bottom of a Petri dish.  

STL for this is on Thingiverse : https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5047067

Still work to do on getting the best from the camera.  Exposure is unstable (yes, auto-exposure is off) and I can probably get better quality from  it, but tweaking is the fun part.  The video was taken at 1 minute intervals over a day and a half.

As for the Physarum, I was trying watercolour art paper which is fairly absorbent if soaked but suspect there is something in there that the slime doesn't like as it's developing much more slowly than a slime growing on kitchen tissue in a…

I'm looking to keep my slime mould experimentations in a cupboard so designed and 3D printed a compact time-lapse rig using a microcontroller camera (ESP32-CAM).  Only goes to 1600x1200 pixels and quality isn't great so doesn't stand too much magnification, but fine for watching the overall growth patterns of the slimy beast. …

I rehydrated Maizie on Thursday and she's already trying to escape to pastures new. 

(OK, I know they have over 700 sexes or whatever, but it's a she :¬)