在顯微鏡下細(xì)菌是什么樣的

Bacteria are extremely small living things. While we measure our own sizes in inches or centimeters, bacterial size is measured in microns. One micron is a thousandth of a millimeter: a pinheadis about a millimeter across. Rodshaped bacteria are usually from two to four microns long, while rounded ones are generally onemicron in diameter. Thus if you enlarged a rounded bacterium a thousand times, it would be just about the size of a pinhead. An adult human magnified by the same amount would be over a mile(1.6 kilometer) tall.
細(xì)菌是極其微小的生物體。我們用英寸或厘米來測量自己的大小，而測量細(xì)菌卻要用微米。一微米等于千分之一毫米。針頭直徑大約一毫米。棒狀細(xì)菌通常有2～4微米長，而圓形細(xì)菌的直徑一般只有1微米。因此，即使你把一個(gè)圓形細(xì)菌放大1000倍，它也不過一個(gè)針頭那么大?？墒侨绻岩粋€(gè)成年人放大1000倍，就會變成1英里(或1.6公里)多高。

Even with an ordinary microscope, you must look closely to see bacteria. Usinga magnification of100 times, one finds that bacteria are barely visible astiny rods or dots. One cannot make out anything of their structure. Using special stains, one can see that some bacteria have attached to them wavylooking “hairs” called flagella. Others have only one flagellum. The flagella rotate, pushing the bacteria through the water. Many bacteria lack flagella and cannot move about by their own power, while others can glide along over surfaces by some little-understood mechanism.
使用100倍的顯微鏡時(shí)，你會發(fā)現(xiàn)細(xì)菌不過是隱約可見的小細(xì)棒或小點(diǎn)點(diǎn)，而它們的結(jié)構(gòu)你卻根本看不出來。使用特殊的著色劑后，你會發(fā)現(xiàn)有的細(xì)菌上長著不少波狀的"毛發(fā)"即鞭毛，而有的細(xì)菌只有一根鞭毛。鞭毛的旋轉(zhuǎn)可以推動(dòng)細(xì)菌在水中行進(jìn)。不少細(xì)菌沒有鞭毛，因而不能自己行進(jìn)。還有些細(xì)菌卻能通過某些鮮為人知的機(jī)制沿物體表面滑動(dòng)。我們所熟知的世界在細(xì)菌眼中完全是另一個(gè)樣子。

From the bacteria point of view, the world is a very different place from what it is to humans. Toa bacterium water is as thick as molasses is to us. Bacteria areso small that they are influenced by the movements of the chemical molecules around them. Bacteria under the microscope, eventhose with no flagella, often bounce about in the water. This is because they collide with the watery molecules and are pushed this way and that. Molecules move so rapidly that within a tenth of a second the molecules around a bacteria have all been replaced by new ones; even bacteria without flagella are thus constantly exposed to a changing environment.
對于細(xì)菌來說，水就同糖漿之于人類一樣稠密。細(xì)菌是如此的微小，周圍化學(xué)分子的一舉一動(dòng)都會對它們產(chǎn)生影響。在顯微鏡下，細(xì)菌，甚至包括那些沒有鞭毛的細(xì)菌，經(jīng)常在水中跳來跳去。這是因?yàn)樗鼈兣c水分子相撞后，被彈向各個(gè)方向。分子移動(dòng)很迅速，僅0.1秒之隔，一個(gè)細(xì)菌周圍的分子就會完全更新。因此，即使是沒有鞭毛的細(xì)菌也暴露在一個(gè)不斷變化的環(huán)境中。