[sci.astro] Making Your Own Microscopes

ghot@s.ms.uky.edu (Allan Adler) (02/14/91)

I am reading books on how to make your own telescope. It occurs to me that I 
haven't seen  books on how to make your own microscope. Are there any and are
there groups of amateurs devoted to this activity ?

Allan Adler
ghot@ms.uky.edu

fiddler@concertina.Eng.Sun.COM (Steve Hix) (02/15/91)

In article <1991Feb14.051740.14508@ms.uky.edu> ghot@s.ms.uky.edu (Allan Adler) writes:
>I am reading books on how to make your own telescope. It occurs to me that I 
>haven't seen  books on how to make your own microscope. Are there any and are
>there groups of amateurs devoted to this activity ?

A new magazine called Science PROBE! (yeah, yeah,...the publisher thought it looked
good) aimed at amateur science enthusiasts has an article on how to make
van Leeuwenhoek-type microscope.  Glass, liquid, glass-liquid lens systems. 

Looks like fun, actually.

As to making more sophisticated microscopes, you could probably develop a 19th-
century-Zeiss type microscope from that start pretty easily.  That would be
about the same scale of difficulty as making a small refractor, but smaller.

--
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  The only drawback with morning is that it comes 
    at such an inconvenient time of day.
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mvp@hsv3.UUCP (Mike Van Pelt) (02/15/91)

In article <1991Feb14.051740.14508@ms.uky.edu> ghot@s.ms.uky.edu (Allan Adler) writes:
>I am reading books on how to make your own telescope. It occurs to me that I 
>haven't seen  books on how to make your own microscope. Are there any and are
>there groups of amateurs devoted to this activity ?

Amazing timing....  I just got the second issue of "Science Probe!", 
and one of the articles is on building your own microscopes.  These
don't look anything like the traditional laboratory scope -- In fact,
they look remarkably like van Leuowenhook's (grotesquely mispelled)
original design.  
-- 
"Ain't nothin' in the middle                  Mike Van Pelt
o' the road, 'cept a yellow                   Headland Technology/Video 7
line and dead 'possums."                      ...ames!vsi1!v7fs1!mvp

mcdonald@aries.scs.uiuc.edu (Doug McDonald) (02/15/91)

In article <7991@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM> fiddler@concertina.Eng.Sun.COM (Steve Hix) writes:
>
>As to making more sophisticated microscopes, you could probably develop a 19th-
>century-Zeiss type microscope from that start pretty easily.  That would be
>about the same scale of difficulty as making a small refractor, but smaller.
>

You could also make a Cassegrain reflecting microscope easily: 
It uses one large concave mirror and one small convex one, both spherical.
I have successfully made these from commercial mirrors. These
can get to numerical apertures of roughly 0.5.


Doug McDonald

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pww@bnr.ca (Peter Whittaker) (02/15/91)

In article <1991Feb15.004101.10578@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> mcdonald@aries.scs.uiuc.edu (Doug McDonald) writes:
>
>In article <7991@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM> fiddler@concertina.Eng.Sun.COM (Steve Hix) writes:
>>
>>As to making more sophisticated microscopes, you could probably develop a 19th-
>>century-Zeiss type microscope from that start pretty easily.  That would be
>>about the same scale of difficulty as making a small refractor, but smaller.
>>
>
>You could also make a Cassegrain reflecting microscope easily: 
>It uses one large concave mirror and one small convex one, both spherical.
>I have successfully made these from commercial mirrors. These
>can get to numerical apertures of roughly 0.5.

Pretty picture deleted......

I don't mean to be a grinch, and this is admittedly an alt. group, but
telescope and microscope design is not appropriate here....  


--
Peter Whittaker      [~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~]   Open Systems Integration
pww@bnr.ca           [                          ]   Bell Northern Research 
Ph: +1 613 765 2064  [                          ]   P.O. Box 3511, Station C
FAX:+1 613 763 3283  [__________________________]   Ottawa, Ontario, K1Y 4H7

pww@bnr.ca (Peter Whittaker) (02/16/91)

In article <1991Feb15.145829.17885@bwdls61.bnr.ca> pww@bnr.ca (Peter Whittaker) writes:
>Pretty picture deleted......
>
>I don't mean to be a grinch, and this is admittedly an alt. group, but
>telescope and microscope design is not appropriate here....  
>
>
Ooops, so sorry:  to those readers of  sci.astro,sci.optics,sci.bio:  this
was cross-posted to alt.books.technical (when the original book reference
was posted), but the discussion digressed quickly.

Hmmm, at least I wasn't the only one who failed to read the cross-post
list before jumping in.....   (humbly) let's all read it next time, okay?



--
Peter Whittaker      [~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~]   Open Systems Integration
pww@bnr.ca           [                          ]   Bell Northern Research 
Ph: +1 613 765 2064  [                          ]   P.O. Box 3511, Station C
FAX:+1 613 763 3283  [__________________________]   Ottawa, Ontario, K1Y 4H7

jset_cif@troi.cc.rochester.edu (Jeff Setzer) (02/16/91)

In <39308@cup.portal.com> mmm@cup.portal.com (Mark Robert Thorson) writes:

>My dad once made a little microscope, about 100X.  He did this by
>drawing a glass rod into a capillary over a Bunsen burner, breaking
>the capillary, then feeding the broken end into the flame to form
>a tiny glass sphere.  He taped this over a commercially-prepared
>microscope slide (in contact with the slide), and by holding it
>right up to your eyeball, you could see the magnified image of the
>slide.

>I've often wondered whether the same trick could be used to make a
>super-cheap lens for a CCD imager.  It would have tremendous spherical
>distortion, but that could be taken care of in software.

Well, I don't know if it could really be taken care of in software.  You can
only do so many things with an aberred image...no matter what algorithms you
use in the software.  Look at Hubble...even though we know exactly how much
SA it has, it still won't perform up to par until new correcting lenses are
introduced.
--
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