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Stanford Bioengineer Develops a 50-cent Paper Microscope

Posted by Unknown on from the check-out-those-microbes dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Scope: A Stanford bioengineer has developed an ultra-low-cost print-and-fold microscope and is now showing others how to make one themselves. The 50-cent lightweight, paper 'Foldscope' — which 'can be assembled in minutes, [and] includes no mechanical moving parts' — was designed to aid disease diagnosis in developing regions." The paper describing the design is on arXiv, and a video demoing the microscope is attached below.

5 of 83 comments (clear)

  1. Also a recent TED talk by canadiannomad · · Score: 4, Informative

    Also a recent TED talk on the topic

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    Hmm, the humour and sarcasm seem to have been be lost on you.
  2. Not entirely made out of paper, of course. by Rhymoid · · Score: 4, Informative
    FTA:

    The Foldscope design accommodates different optical configurations, including spherical ball lenses, spherical micro-lens doublets (such as a Wollaston doublet), and more complex assemblies of aspheric micro-lenses.

  3. Re:Lenses too? by beelsebob · · Score: 4, Informative

    The one shown in the video uses pinhole projection.

  4. http://www.foldscope.com/ by steveha · · Score: 4, Informative

    They have a website devoted to this:

    http://www.foldscope.com/

    And the news on the web site is that they will give away 10,000 of these to people who volunteer to test them. If you think you could do a good job of testing, maybe you should sign up.

    http://www.foldscope.com/#/10ksignup/

    To me, the most impressive part is that he claims they have very accurate focusing. I believe he said "micron" focusing. I'm not sure how that works, but the paper is cut to a very accurate shape (the video showed some sort of computer-controlled cutter, it might even have been a laser cutter). By moving a tab I guess the paper can be made to flex predictably to focus the lens?

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    lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
  5. Re:Why not put them out in schools ? by esten · · Score: 5, Informative

    but what about the potential benefit in schools ?

    The kids do love them. And can assemble them by themselves.

    I'm a Stanford PhD student and for an outreach organization Science Bus we actually worked with 2-5th graders locally to each build their own microscope to keep. The Foldscope works well and actually found the projection ability great in the classroom so that multiple students can see the same thing at once.