Building a simple microscope
Cells are very interesting structures which many of you can view if you have a small home microscope from a kit or toy set.
However, you may want to try and make your own microscope and try it out as a mobile one which can be taken with you anywhere and which you can make again and again.
It will allow you to look at water, insects, leaves and so many other structures.
You will need:
- Two toilet paper or kitchen towel rolls. It would be best if one of them could fit inside the other.
- Some thin cardboard, maybe from an old postcard or cereal packet
- Kitchen foil
- Wide transparent sticky tape
- A toothpick or wooden skewer
- A sewing needle
- Petroleum jelly
- Glue
- Distilled water or some other liquid like cooking oil or surgical spirit
- An eye dropper
- A sharp blade, a knife, or a pair of pointed scissors
- A small flashlight that fits inside the narrower of the toilet paper rolls
- A pencil
And last but not least ... a helping hand from an adult.
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Method
First you need the narrower toilet paper roll. Close off one end of the roll with a piece of transparent sticky tape. When this microscope is ready, you will place the things you want to look at on this piece of sticky tape.
To stop the things you place on the tape from rolling all over the place, you need to first trace around the roll on a piece of cardboard. Now cut this disk slightly smaller, so that it can fit easily inside the roll. All you have to do now is to cut a hole at the centre of this disk and stick it onto the tape.
Next trace round the larger roll, onto a piece of thin cardboard. Draw another circle inside this, about 2mm smaller than the one you traced. Draw a square on the outside of the larger circle, with all the sides touching the circle. Now cut out the square, and the smaller circle to end up with a square with a large circular hole.
For the next step you need to cut another square, the same size as the one you have just made, but this time you should not cut out a big hole. Instead, punch a hole at the centre of the square. Take a piece of kitchen foil and cover this hole with it. Use glue to fix the foil. It is very important that the glue is placed only around the hole in the cardboard.
Next you need to make the lens for your microscope. Start with the cardboard square with the foil on it, and using a fine needle, prick a small hole, as perfectly round as possible. Smear a small amount of petroleum jelly or grease around the hole in the foil, using a toothpick. When this is ready, do the same on the flipside. Be VERY careful not to cover the hole.
Now take the larger roll, and the cardboard square with the large hole, and stick this onto one end of the roll using some tape. Finish this off by smearing more petroleum jelly on this piece of cardboard.
Now you have made the lower and the upper part of the microscope, and you need to make the lens without which you will not be able to see anything. Before going onto the next step, you need to rinse the eyedropper well in distilled water.
After thoroughly cleaning the eyedropper, take the cardboard square, the one with the foil at the centre, in one hand and use your other hand to place a drop of distilled water (or spirit or other liquid) onto the tiny hole in the foil. The petroleum jelly which was smeared around the hole earlier will hold the drop of water in place. This is your lens!
Next gently place this onto the piece of cardboard you fixed to the roll earlier on. The two pieces of cardboard should stick together with pertoleum jelly which you smeared on the previous cardboard square.
The microscope is ready! To start using it you need to place a lighted flashlight inside the narrower roll, place whatever you want to observe on the tape-covered hole at the top of the tube and finally place the wider roll over the narrower one.
The last thing you need to do is to focus the picture by sliding the outer roll up and down until the image is crisp.