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Mighty Small Microbes

Meet the microbial superheroes!

Although microbes are too small to see, they are capable of fantastic feats. Meet some of our "microbial superheroes" -- a series of microbe illustrations and personifications meant to convey information about microbial capabilities and life strategies.

Printable Outreach & Education Tools

Printable Mighty Small Matching Cards

The following trading cards include a set of five microbial taxa and a corresponding five matching Microbial Superhero cards as shown above. These printable images include these 10 cards which can be cut and optionally laminated, either as stand-alone cards, a front-and-back "flash-card" flipping set, or as a set of two cards which can be matched as an activity.

Print the microbe cards here and the matching Superheroes set here.

Winogradsky columns
1-page poster/comic

Print

Hhidden microbial superpowers
1-page poster/comic

Print

Diversity of soil
1-page poster/comic

Print

The soil diversity comic is used in tandem with a set of three soil tubes with pre-weighed amounts of soil which each represent distinct microbial population sizes. Current estimates suggest that 10⁵ to 10⁷ cells live in each gram of soil. If we take an upper estimate, (10⁷ microorganisms in each gram of soil) 800 grams would represent the population of the Earth (8 billion), 34g would represent the population of the United States (350 million), and 1.3g would represent the population of the state of Pennsylvania (13 million).

If we assume an extreme microbial density (e.g. the richest soils on Earth, with 10⁸ cells per gram) one could use the following soil amounts: 80g = Earth, 3.4g = USA, 0.1g = Pennsylvania (smaller proportions may be easier for show and tell).