The Foldoscope, a 50 cent paper microscope
March 10, 2014 5:52 PM   Subscribe

Stanford bioengineer Manu Prakash has developed the Foldoscope (pdf), an Origami-based paper microscope. A shave and a haircut is two bits (25 cents), the Foldoscope costs only twice that.
posted by Rob Rockets (10 comments total) 38 users marked this as a favorite
 
This is pretty fantastic. I can see all sorts of field applications for this.
posted by arcticseal at 6:08 PM on March 10, 2014


How did the world just become more awesome? I so want to throw a party just to give them in a loot bag!
posted by Alexandra Kitty at 7:52 PM on March 10, 2014 [3 favorites]


I saw this earlier today. Seems like such a fantastic idea! I love that the design can be changed easily.
posted by annsunny at 9:52 PM on March 10, 2014


Holy shit this is cool.
posted by louche mustachio at 10:17 PM on March 10, 2014


You might be interested in signing up to become a beta tester.
posted by artdrectr at 11:18 PM on March 10, 2014 [1 favorite]


"In the future, darkfield and fluorescence Foldscopes will also be adapted for diagnostics, and sensitivity and specificity will be measured for various disease-specific Foldscopes in the field as clinical validations against existing diagnostic standards."

I would have been all over this in grad school. I can see this becoming a real, important part of field epidemiology and surveillance. I wonder, too, if it'll be capable of use in regulatory testing set-ups in place of, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment.

A good reminder that sometimes the best technology is the stuff that's the most accessible.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 9:17 AM on March 11, 2014


Oh man, this is super cool. I'm part of a group of optics grad students that does outreach with local HS students and I'm really really hoping that they give us one.

Honestly, the coolest thing in here, IMO, is the fact that they're printing lenses that aren't absolutely terrible. It costs us $1200-ish to get a decent custom one-off lens, and those require lots and lots of precision in their manufacture. I'm rather curious as to what kind of quality they're actually getting; hopefully if they us one we can really put it through its paces and measure the performance. They've got Zemax (optical modeling software) analysis in the paper, but don't seem to have any analytical real world measurements, like using a resolution target. Woo, optics!
posted by Maecenas at 10:21 AM on March 11, 2014


It appears they are using a different kind of lens that doesn't need to be precisely machined. From the last link:

One of the unique design features of the microscope is the use of inexpensive spherical lenses rather than the precision-ground curved glass lenses used in traditional microscopes. These poppy-seed-sized lenses were originally mass produced in various sizes as an abrasive grit that was thrown into industrial tumblers to knock the rough edges off metal parts. In the simplest configuration of the Foldscope, one 17-cent lens is press-fit into a small hole in the center of the slide-mounting platform.

So it seems they don't print the lenses themselves, but order them in bulk somewhere. I haven't found where one can buy such lenses, and I suspect you probably can't order just one.
posted by Mayhembob at 12:47 PM on March 11, 2014


So it seems they don't print the lenses themselves, but order them in bulk somewhere. I haven't found where one can buy such lenses, and I suspect you probably can't order just one.

The "pdf" arXiv link includes part numbers and vendors for everything, though a cursory glance suggests they're likely to be in the "won't talk to you unless you're buying thousands" category. (Which is the category someone making a $2 kit version is likely to be in.)

But, if you're willing to pay hundreds of times the listed price ($15-25 per lens, in this case), it looks like Edmund Optics will sell you most of the lenses individually.

Also, this is fantastic. I approached the idea with serious skepticism. . . but, their paper is convincing. If only all wacky homebrew things on the internet were as thoughtfully and thoroughly explored and documented. Thanks for the post!
posted by eotvos at 1:58 PM on March 11, 2014


Interesting and wonderful.

On the subject of spherical lenses, playing with clear glass marbles it's a fascinating thing to look through them.
posted by glasseyes at 6:13 AM on March 12, 2014


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