Build Your Own Pocket Microscope

This engineering design challenge will allow students to build their own structurally stable pocket microscope using basic materials that include glass beads, plastic straws, index cards, tape, binder clips, paper clips, and a light source (eventually integrate their cell phone cameras in a new challenge). I will set up the lab to have minimal frontloading, where students have self-testing and self-discovery of how different sized curved lenses from glass beads work to magnify an object. This will lead to designing/redesigning, building, and testing their microscope prototypes until students have a structurally stable microscope to present and share. Once students share and present their basic “prototype” microscopes, I will give them a new engineering design challenge of how to build a “better” microscope using their cell phone cameras. Theoretically, students will use their basic prototype microscopes from the first challenge to build a new microscope using many of the same materials. I chose to develop this engineering challenge lesson based on my Agilent laboratory experience of testing prototype instruments. The laboratory experience I gained at Agilent directly connects to the Engineering Design Process that engineers follow to build 21st Century industry changing instruments.