Tweezers

Lunchbox Laser Shows

Lunchbox Laser Shows

Back in the 1970s, my friend Wayne Gillis and I used to do light shows at science fiction conventions. We had the usual panoply of overhead, slide, and custom-made projectors, and a single, very expensive, helium-neon laser from Edmund Scientific. Calling ourselves Light Opera, and later, Illuminatus, we performed at ConFusion conventions in Ann Arbor, […]

Lensless Microscope

Lensless Microscope

Inside your webcam is an imager chip with thousands of sensors, each much smaller than a hair. Replace the lens with an LED, place a sample directly on the the chip, and you have a lensless microscope capable of streaming live video of plankton or other microorganisms to any display.