50-Cent Microscope That Folds Like Origami [video]

https://engineering.stanford.edu/research-profile/manu-prakashs-50-cent-microscope-folds-origami

57 13 12 years ago

engineering.stanford.edu

kken4• 12 years ago

Very cool! Any more detailed information about its construction? I bet they would also be interesting to a different audience - as toy.

Edit: Found this http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1403/1403.1211.pdf

geekxworld• 12 years ago

Wow, great article!

Rasmase• 12 years ago

This looks really great! I would love to get my hands on one.

leoc• 12 years ago

They're sending out 10,000 free microscopes in a beta-test shortly: http://www.foldscope.com/10ksignup

enscr• 12 years ago

Previous discussion here : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7377213

ezequiel-garzon• 12 years ago

I wonder how soon this will be developed in large quantities. Funding from places like Bill Gates' foundation is almost certain, but there seems to be a lag, as the TED talk is from June 2012, while the arXiv paper [1] as well as the linked post from March 2014. Maybe hitting the 50¢ mark would require lots of units?

[1] http://arxiv.org/abs/1403.1211

jwildeboer• 12 years ago

Unfortunately they try to patent it. Let's see how much the patent license will add to the 50 cent and how monopolistic they will act. Le Sigh.

http://www.google.com/patents/WO2013120091A1

kken4• 12 years ago

Ca 0.50$ is actually only the Material cost. This number does not include cost for manufacturing, development, distribution, quality control, etc.

imdhmd• 12 years ago

Manu Prakash discussing this on TED: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8cF5QPPmWU

m_mueller• 12 years ago

He describes the lens as being 'manufactured directly from paper'. I'd like to understand what this means. I'm guessing that the Origami technique is what gives the lens its 3D structure, but at least you'll need some highly transparent material to form it, right? Do they have plastic or even glass glued into there?

kken4• 12 years ago

Its a micro glass lens as described here:

http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1403/1403.1211.pdf

kken4• 12 years ago

In general, I believe the premise of this is a bit off. You often see that people from the west try to design "low-cost" devices for developing countries by introducing paradigm-shifting changes to the design. But this rarely seems to succeed. Just think of all the low cost computing device projects for Africa and India.

What won out in the end? Ultra-Low-Cost smartphones, basically offering the same functionality as the western counterparts but with cost drastically reduced by being based on completely domestic chinese designs and Android.

In this case, the problem is rather the education required to use the microscope and interpret the results. A professional will probably manage to finance a $50-$100 microscope, either second hand or as a knock-off, regardless of being in a third world country.

The paper microscope is a great toy or educational device though.

cmsmith• 12 years ago

Is diagnosis really a problem for health care in the developing world? I would imagine that in places like sub-Saharan Africa, they have a pretty good idea of what the symptoms of malaria look like, and they don't need microscopes so much as they need medicine.

50-Cent Microscope That Folds Like Origami [video]

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