Tag: Microscope

It’s pretty amazing what smartphone cameras are capable of these days. I used to carry around lots of camera gear to events, and with very few exceptions now, my iPhone 11 Pro Max is all I bring with me.

There is a whole universe that we can only see through a microscope. But high powered microscopes are cumbersome and often quite expensive. The Foldscope can help you check out the microscopic world and goes anywhere.

Earlier this year, we checked out the ScopeAround, a set of affordable scientific cameras that stream video to smartphones. But if you’re looking for something even simpler and cheaper, check out SmartMicroOptics’ Blips, a pair of macro and micro lenses that you stick over your mobile device’s camera.

Mobile devices have become so popular as both still and video cameras that we now have lens attachments for phones and videocamera rigs for tablets. The ScopeAround system aims to add to that revolution by making affordable versions of scientific cameras that stream video to iOS or Android devices.

Last year we featured Carl Merriam’s LEGO Microscope. It turns out he actually made an improved version shortly after making that one. His LEGO Microscope Mk. II provides up to 10x magnification and even has an LED light.

High quality microscopes cost thousands of dollars and can be hard to operate and maintain. A group of researchers from Stanford University are close to changing that with a microscope that’s made mostly out of paper and costs less than a dollar to make.

Genes, chromosomes, DNA. We all know it’s complicated, but who knew it could be so beautiful? Electron microscopist Louise Hughes is passionate about microscopy and the genetic structures that she has studied and observed. And now they are available to wear as jewelry, as Louise has begun a Kickstarter campaign to get these pieces of jewelry in production.

Flickr member/Artist/Legologist Carl Merriam loves making functional sculptures out of his favorite medium. Take this microscope for instance. It’s not high tech enough for CSI: Legoland, but it does have a magnifying glass inside and working focus knobs.

We just posted the world’s smallest stop-motion animation over on The Awesomer earlier today, and now it turns out that’s not the only animation IBM’s team of scientists have created. They also made a special one just for Trekkies.

Bodelin Technologies has unveiled a new product that turns your iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad into a fully functional microscope. The microscope itself has precision optical glass and supports magnification of 20x to 80x.

3D printers are changing the world – now on a microscopic scale as well. Researchers at the Vienna University of Technology have perfected printing 3D objects at the nanoscale and it looks like they are having a great time playing with their new toy.

Up until now, the only ways I knew that you could shoot images in 3D was either with a dual lens camera, with two cameras, or some sort of motion-control rig. But thanks to a new lens technology being developed, we could some day capture full 3-dimensional images with a single, complex lens assembly.

Happy Birthday, Professor Martyn Poliakoff! Your lab-mates at the University of Nottingham’s Nanotechnology Centre have made you a birthday present.

Earlier this week, I read about a tiny Pac-Man discovered with an electron microscope. But that was just a random scientific anomaly. Turns out there’s a real microscopic Pac-Man out there, and you can actually play it!

While I knew for a while that you could use the iPhone’s camera to take really close up pictures of stuff, this is the first time I’ve seen an app that’s designed to help you take high quality scientific images with your iPhone’s camera.

This frightening looking gadget from Japan lets you examine every nasty little nook and cranny of yourself and capture on your computer it for prosperity. Thanko’s USB Microscope Camera features a high-detail digital camera attached to the end of a long LED illuminated tube.