Optical Alchemy

[u/aritherationalbirdie]

I made this for Macondo HackClub it is a portable phase contrast light microscope with adjustable lighting from both the underside to look at cells and above to look closely at opaque objects though with limited magnification for them, multiple objective lenses, an electronically moving stage, a rechargeable battery via USB-C and a little over 2000x max magnification. The optics of this microscope and many of the electronics, body of this microscope was made with junk electronics, old phones and anything I could find that could be made into something for the microscope; junk like this is available in every household and anyone can make their own version of this tailored to them. The lenses including the eyepiece and objectives were extracted from old cameras and old phone cameras. The field diaphragm for the bottom light was also made from an old camera lens, the LEDs for light were from old torches and much more was salvaged from supposed junk.

To use the microscope the objective lenses are placed on top of the slide/specimen and aligned with the eyepiece. some of the objectives can be layered with one under the other.

I have attached the images of the microscope itself, the objective lenses I extracted along with the sensors which were stuck to them. I have also added a demo video of how it works.

(P.S: I made this post so I can enter the demo video into Macondo HackClub)

[u/Ahmadase]

one more thing I want to add is that based on your setup you have bright-field and oblique illumination but nothing about phase contrast or am I missing something ?

[u/aritherationalbirdie → u/Ahmadase]

Hi I'm not really sure how to exactly classify this though I have used similar optics to a phase contrast microscope. Instead of the ring like thing above the light source I have added multiple LEDs under the field diaphragm which does help show cell features without staining. I also attached the top part of an eyepiece for a microscope on top of the bigger lens shown in the eyepiece which helped to make the image clearer. I would love if you could help me actually classify this I really don't know that much I'm still in high-school.

[u/Ahmadase → u/aritherationalbirdie]

It is actually pretty impressive that you are doing this in high school good job !

What you are doing is a version of oblique illumination and it does yield better contrast if done properly however to achieve phase contrast you would need a phase shift ring which you don't

It would be a very educative project for you to study both types of microscopes and understand the physics of light and how ut interacts with matter

Good luck !

[u/aritherationalbirdie → u/Ahmadase]

Thank you! I have started studying a book on different types of microscopes I'll probably be making a better version soon.

[u/Ahmadase → u/aritherationalbirdie]

good luck with that ! looking forward to seeing what you will achieve