Origami Microscope?
From an article in the Economist June 7-13 issue, Stanford’s Prakash Lab has engineered a folding microscope made of a sheet of paper. Yes, it is indeed an Origami microscope. It can be used outdoors, is strong enough to survive a drop from a second story window, and is somewhat water resistant. It was developed with the idea of promoting science in undeveloped countries as well as in education. The scope costs about $.50 cents to $1.00 to manufacture. The Foldscope project at the lab won the Gates Exploration Grant. Now it is being field tested. Unfortunately we are hearing about this too late to apply to be one of the 10,000 Beta testers they were looking for, but it may be well worth our while to keep an eye on their progress. It would be a wonderful field mycology tool.
This news article came to us from Shea... THANK YOU SHEA!!
To read more: http://www.foldscope.com/
To see Prakash talk about and show the Foldscope, visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8cF5QPPmWU
Don’t miss this one…. Amazing!!!
Thank you Shea for giving us the head’s up on this news item. All of you, if you come upon a mycologically-relevant news item, please do pass it along to ffsc-club-buzz@ffsc.us, our direct email to the webgroup.