Professor Timo Betz, a German biophysicist, is at the University of Gttingen. His name appears in many cited research papers. Why is his microscope made of Legos?The simple answer is: It's not for him. It is for anyone who wants to build one.Betz said that if you have the right parts and are skilled at building Lego, it is possible to complete the task in under 30 minutes. For someone who is not very familiar with the process, one hour might be sufficient. When it comes to adjusting the focus, there are some tricky parts. This quality regime requires that the lens be moved on a fraction of a hair's diameter. This is difficult to do with Lego, but a computerized worm drive could accomplish the task. This takes patience, however. However, I feel that children can do it better than adults.Many disciplines of science and medicine rely on microscopy. However, not everyone has this technology. Betzs was a joint project by researchers from Mnster and the Universities of Gttingen. It was designed to create a high-resolution microscope using only plastic bricks and parts taken from mobile phones. This project can be used to enhance the understanding of microscopes by children and adults alike.Betz said that Emil, my son, and I were just sitting around playing Lego over the weekend. I had offered to give a lecture to school children, with the goal of introducing them to my lab biophysics work, with a focus cell mechanics. I was also asking him questions about what is most interesting for his age. I asked him about his love for the microscopes in the lab and he suggested that we build a Lego microscope. Because of the exact movements and all the non-Lego parts, my first reaction was to think that it would be too difficult. He came up with great solutions to the problems that I had explained to him.Surprisingly high qualityOnly the optics of the microscope are not made from Legos. They come from modern smartphone lenses and cost just a few dollars each.Betz stated that after destroying a camera-replacement unit to reach the lens, I was truly surprised. I was able see details in fixed cells that I wasn't used to seeing with the microscopes I use in the lab. This was all thanks to a four-euro ($4.70) lens. This is due to the requirement that smartphone camera lenses have a flat module. This results in very high numerical apertures of about 0.5 in the lens, which in turn dictates the resolution. The lenses have already been designed to compensate for chromatic and spherical aberration. This is exactly what we needed. These plastic lenses are of exceptional quality.Betz, as noted, isn't keeping his microscope to him either. You can find the instructions to build one on Github. They are available in English and Spanish. The journal The Biophysicist 2021 published a paper that described the work. (Emil Betz Blesa was just eight years old when this project began, and is now ten years old. He even receives his first credit as a co-author.This project could be for you if you have exhausted all your Lego collections or are looking for something new with more real-world applications (and far fewer LEGOs) than your scaled down Space Shuttle model.Editors' Recommendations
