A fully functional modular microscope has been built using LEGO bricks and low-cost smartphone lenses. Designed by researchers, teachers and schoolchildren in Germany, the instrument is easy to build, yet it can resolve micrometre-sized objects such as individual living cells.
The idea for a LEGO microscope came to biophysicist Timo Betz (from the Universities of Göttingen and Münster) and his 10 year-old son one weekend while playing with LEGO – modular plastic building blocks that are beloved by children (and many adults) worldwide.
“My first reaction was that this is too hard, because of the precise movements and all the parts that are non-LEGO,” recalls Betz. “But my son came up with a series of great ideas on how to overcome the difficulties that I explained to him; he even figured out a way to use a LEGO light source to illuminate the samples.”
Junior author
By the end of the weekend, the father-son duo had built a prototype. However, even with assistance from Betz’s colleague Bart Vos, it took over a year to fine-tune the design, write construction plans and validate the instrument’s usefulness. Now, the trio has described the microscope in a paper published in The Biophysicist (with Betz’s son co-author, naturally).
The final design resembles a simple LEGO tower, but it hides some clever features (see figure). For example, to provide precise focus adjustment, the team had to “push the limits of the brick system” when designing the objective holder. This incorporates a gear rack with a gear worm screw that achieves approximately 3 mm of travel for every full rotation.
The only non-LEGO parts are the microscope’s lenses. For high magnification, these can be cannibalized from a low-cost replacement iPhone 5 camera module and then attached to a LEGO brick with transparent tape and a glass coverslip. Using these plastic iPhone lenses, the microscope can achieve 254× magnification.
Step-by-step building instructions
Most important to the creators, however, is that the microscope can be built and used in classrooms and homes around the world to learn about optics. To further this aim, they created build instructions and a step-by-step tutorial to guide people through construction while learning about the relevant optical characteristics of a microscope. Moreover, they enlisted eight 9–13-year-olds from a local Münster school who were tasked with building the microscope in an attempt to show how such a hands-on activity assists learning.
Given COVID-19 restrictions, the researchers could not see the children engage with the microscope activity in class. So instead, they created a kit that children could take home alongside a questionnaire to be filled out before and after playing with the kit. Answers revealed that the children’s knowledge of microscopy almost doubled after making the microscope.
Fun and informative activities
These children also conducted several experiments with their newly built microscope. These were suggested by the researchers as interesting, fun and informative activities. The experiments included watching crystallization in real-time as water evaporates from a thin film of salt solution; recording pigmentation changes to red onion epidermal cells exposed to an osmotic shock; and observing the movement of tiny swimming organism such as Artemia shrimp and water fleas.
Physics and LEGO: an enduring love affair
This is not the first time a microscope has been made of LEGO. In 2013, a group of postgraduate students at the University of California, San Francisco designed a similar microscope called LegoScope. However, this instrument required a custom objective and 3D-printed parts.
Betz argues that the new LEGO microscope’s readily available and reusable parts “lower the barrier, especially for parents”, making it perfect for simply demonstrating the principles of microscopy.
“It was actually a lot of fun to develop this,” he says. “I just hope that children and their parents have a chance to realize here that even with simple tools, one can do amazing things.”
If you would like to build your own LEGO microscope, full instructions are available in English, German, Dutch and Spanish.
