Turn your smartphone into a microscope
Researchers from the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for Nanoscale BioPhotonics have developed a smartphone microscope that uses the camera’s internal flash as the light source. Their development, described in Scientific Reports (February 2018), is not the first smartphone microscope. It is, however, the first smartphone microscope that does not require an externally powered light source. Consisting of only two parts—a 3D-printed clip and a lens—it is simple and inexpensive to produce. See also: Cellphone cameras; Lens (optics); Materials science and engineering; Microscope; Optical microscope