[Aj] found this great article for building a really cheap microscope. The goal of the project is to construct a compound microscope that is superior to the cheap toy/children’s microscopes. Besides standard construction materials it uses the lenses from four disposable cameras. The article also covers a lot of possible improvements to the ‘scope: focus control, fine focus control, condensers, different eyepieces.
yawn
I don;t know, I think it’s kind of neat. I could easily see someone doing something like this as an inexpensive school project or something.
This is really a cool idea! I bet that a brass tube and some nicer hardwood and a little time you could make a really nice microscope to keep around in a stylish office/home lab.
don’t forget to have a look at the rest:
http://www.funsci.com/texts/index_en.htm
i liked the glass-sphere microscope:
http://www.funsci.com/fun3_en/usph/usph.htm
(Anton van Leeuwenhoek being from my country)
cool!
I think this is interesting. I got a “childrens” microscope about 7 years ago or such. Aside from the crappy built-in underlight, the rest is solid steel and the lens can go 1x, 5x, 20x, 100x, 500x, and 900x (which is enough to see blood cells. They’re cool little buggers.) I should build this, and I probably will, but first I need money. And a little more handiness with tools.
Yes, the hack may seem a little boring. But it could be worthy of quite a few mutations.
homebrew microscope + half decent webcam + some sort of time lapse software = endless hours of watching various types of bacteria scurry around!
prove me wrong guys, prove me wrong.
yawn. had high expections I guess for halloween. pumkin carving hack, or hack your own costume from common household items, or pumkin launching catapult. something.
Is it me or is H a D becoming crap???
1) I recently attatched a webcam to a cheap old microscope that I had laying around- results were very fun, and it was super easy to do
2) I would love to see an improvement to this design, remaining cost effective of course, that would change the mirror to a few LEDs, powered by battery- should still stay cheap (led’s cost pennies and battery unit could be harvested from almost anything)
cool microscope, might use it for my next science fair! thats amazingly cheap in price!
_-[Happy Halloween]-_
[{william}]
#7 “prove me wrong…” you can’t see bacteria live bacteria in a microscope. You have to stain the first, usually Gram staining, and that will kill them.
“But i have seen it done…” yes you have.. but that was in a phase contrast microscope, and that is something difrent.
“But can’t i just hack the phase of the contrast in this microscope…” NO.
The people! Help us! The village school for a class of biology needs a microscope. School very poor. Who has old unnecessary microscope present it please our school. Beforehand thank! Russia, 453100, Bashkortostan, Sterlitamak, Odesskaya, 91-44, Pivtsaev S.V.
I have a Sony video camera that I inadvertently threw overboard on a dive trip in Fiji. I have kept it because i thought the lenses may be useful sometime…could it be used for something like this?