Interdisciplinary learning (IDL) –Turning a smartphone into a

microscope

‘...learners tackle relevant and meaningful questions or problems that will allow them not simply to make connections between two or more disciplines but also to draw on and develop their disciplinary knowledge, understanding and skills and thereby deepen their understanding of these disciplines’

STEM Education Committee report on IDL, ‘Pillars and Lintels’ Prof Colin Graham

IDL and CfE

BTC 1 – ‘interdisciplinary projects and studies’ described to be one of the four main features of the new curriculum

BTC 3 – ‘can take the form of individual one-off projects or longer courses of study’

The reality….

‘There is an increasing demand for a higher level of skills of a multidisciplinary nature’Dr Brian Bathgate, Chair of Life Sciences Advisory Board

NASA ExoMars Rover mission – 2018, searching for evidence of life ever existing on Mars

Computational Biology – image of mapping for fetal alcohol syndrome taken from BBC Exposure programme

Turning a Smartphone into a microscope – Multidisciplinary project

How to do it and experiences from Robin

Wallace, Glenrothes High School

Suggested resources requiredThese can be changed depending on your design, the only key component is the lens (and a camera phone!!)

5mmx50mm roofing bolts, Legs for the microscope(http://www.screwfix.com/p/roofing-bolts-bzp-m5-x-50mm-pack-of-10/52384 for an example of these)

Clear 3mm perspex , stage part where samples sit

Tinted 5mm perspex , platform for phone and microscope lens

4mm x 30mm Pan head machine crew, focus bolt that runs through phone platform and flexes stage.

5mm Hex nuts

5mm washers for legs but also to act as a spacer between phone platform and stage

7mm Collimating lenshttp://www.ebay.com/itm/5-x-Collimating-lens-Focusing-Lens-7mm-for-Laser-Diodes-/261072485854

Craft, design and Technology – Pupils design a template and make the microscope using 5mm perspex

Science – Pupils learn about refraction and lenses and then use the microscope for whatever it is you would like to do!!

Other subjects – Art, Computing, business……

Example of completed microscope (minus the phone!!)

Leg, then spacers to separate top platform from stage (approx 2mm gap)

Focus bolt through top platform that pushes down onto stage causing it to flex

Top platform

Lens in place (see later for how this was achieved) Stage underneath, 3mm clear

perspex

Another example. You can see the focus bolt

Stage

Top platform for phone

Slide out of view on stage, but magnified image is appearing on the phones camera.

Focus bolt hole, drilled and then tapped to suit focus bolt thread size

5mm diameter legs holes, drilled to suit the chosen diameter of legs. We chose 3 legs as this was a cheaper option.

Note that the top platform and stage can be cut and shaped in whatever way the pupils want.

Glenrothes High School

S1 (12/13 year old) girls final microscope at Glenrothes High School. Pupils are designing and building the microscopes in CDT and then using them in both Science and Art later in the year.

Extra + a little Physics to finish!

Another example of a device that has been designed – The ‘Foldscope’

http://www.ted.com/talks/manu_prakash_a_50_cent_microscope_that_folds_like_origami?language=en

Could our device be altered to make it more portable (fit in a pocket with the phone) and use less materials in the construction??

Design adaptedShown is the first attempt at our Microscope taken from ‘Instructables’ website. You could build this and ask pupils to improve it as we have.

No need for this base, nor for a light as in the original design. We found that white paper and background light was suffice. Pupils may want to include a light or mirror in their design?

Stage was to cumbersome and didn’t allow fine level of focussing required. Depth of focus was in the range of 0.2mm so this method was not ideal.

5mm lens in 3mm perspex was good, but 3mm perspex isn’t as easy to shape. A 7mm lens allowed a better image quality but lower magnification

Ray diagram above demonstrated how the light is being refracted for a 3mm lens when placed 4mm in front of a camera phone lens/

The science behind the project

Higher Magnification?

• A 2.5mm diameter ball lens with an effective focal length of 2.5mm will give a magnification of 100x– But the sample would have to be in contact and only a very

small portion of the image would be in focus. So we decided against this design.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Dave Craig from Selex Es and Hazel Craig from ST Microelectronics for their continued support with this project. And a thank you to Robin Wallace and the other teachers at Glenrothes High School who have trialled the project with an S1 cohort.

Original concept from http://www.instructables.com/id/10-Smartphone-to-digital-microscope-conversion/