Reinventing Biology Labs by Turning Smartphones Into Microscopes

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Reinventing biology labs by turning smartphones into microscopes

Newswise ROLLA, Mo. With nothing more than a smartphone and less than $10 of trinkets and hardware supplies, students at Missouri University of Science and Technology can build their own microscopes this fall as part of a biology lab.

This do-it-yourself microscope is part of Missouri S&Ts effort to re-imagine how lab courses can be taught in five science and engineering disciplines on the campus. Organizers of the project hope to use the findings from their experiment to create a how-to manual for other colleges and universities.

The Transforming Instructional Labs project, which is funded through a grant from the University of Missouri System, also involves an evaluation of other universities that are experimenting with their instructional labs.

Were working with different lab courses on campus that use blended or online learning and plan to come up with an instructional model that could be reproduced anywhere, says Angela Hammons, manager of instructional technology services at Missouri S&T.

This fall, students enrolled in two biological sciences courses taught by Terry Wilson, an associate teaching professor in that department, will be a part of this experiment. In one of those courses, General Biology, students will earn extra credit by building their own digital microscopes using carriage bolts, nuts, wing nuts, washers, plywood and Plexiglas from a hardware store, laser pointer lenses, LED click lights from a keychain flashlight to build a stand, and a smartphone for viewing and enlarging lab specimens. Rather than sending students on a sort of scavenger hunt for the parts, Wilson plans to make kits for the microscope stand available in the universitys bookstore.

The DIY microscopes can magnify samples up to 175 times with a single laser pointer lens, or nearly 400 times when stacking two lenses, says Daniel Miller, who recently earned his master of science degree in biological sciences from Missouri S&T. Miller created a prototype to use in Wilsons General Biology lab last spring, where he served as a teaching assistant. He also offered extra credit to any of the 50 students in the lab who would build one. Fifteen students took him up on the offer.

They love it, says Miller. They get to take it home and can use it to look at specimens whenever they want.

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Reinventing Biology Labs by Turning Smartphones Into Microscopes