Gail Smith, age 13, of Lafayette, Tenn.
How big is an amoeba?
Amoebas come in assorted sizes and if your eyes are very sharp you may be able to spot one of the giants. You may find him on a watersoaked log or on a piece of floating pond weed. He will look like a small whitish dot, dust big enough for your eyes to see. This fellow is a giant of the family. His cousins are smaller, too small to be seen without a microscope.
The average sized amoeba is about one hundredth part of an inch wide. He is a shapeless flat blob of belly, If you can watch him under a microscope, you can see why he is called the amoeba, which means change. The little blob of belly pokes out first one finger, then another. His tiny soft body flows this way and that way, changing its shape from minute to minute.