Foldscope Inventor Manu Prakash Shows Students How to Reveal Aliens

High student holds his completed Foldscope up to the light to view a slide. ASCB Photo

High school student holds his completed Foldscope up to the light to view a slide. ASCB Photo

An alien-like creature came in and out of focus on two large screens in a Philadelphia conference room yesterday. You could see tiny hairs on its many rows of feet, blood vessels under its translucent skin, its antennae scanning the environment. As remarkable as the picture of this polychaete worm was the microscope that imaged it. The entire microscope was be printed on a single sheet of paper at a cost of less than a dollar.

Manu Prakash, professor at Stanford University, is the inventor of this Foldscope. This simple pocket-sized, paper-thin microscope can magnify specimens 2,000 times without power. Yesterday Prakash shared his technology with over 150 local high school teachers and students at the 2014 ASCB/IFCB meeting.

“Fold it like a burrito!”

“Now it’s like a snake eating its own tail!”

“Tuck the bunny ears inside!”

“Make it dance, so you can pan and focus!” Prakash shouted from the podium as he led the attendees through the process of building their own Foldscopes.

Manu Prakash, Foldscope inventor, shows high school students how to make and use his origami microscope. ASCB Photo

Within 15 minutes, some of the dexterous attendees had succeeded. Arched back in their chairs, they looked through their folded microscopes at the lights above to illuminate samples. After 35 minutes, everyone in the room had assembled a Foldscope, including a few microscopists as young as five years old. Even former ASCB President Bruce Alberts, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, held up his origami instrument while admitting, “This is kind of tough for an old guy.”

As a sample came into focus, a student at a nearby table cried out, “I see legs, but it’s not moving!” Another said, “I think I see nuclei in my thumbprint.” A third said he was looking forward to taking it home to try out on water taken from the creek behind his house.
Prakash has already sent out thousands of these microscopes, and he has 5,000 more to send to those who are willing to share their discoveries and feedback. Prakash encourages curious beta-testers to fill out an interest form here. With just a sample of ocean water, a Foldscope, and an iPhone, Prakash was able to capture what he called “the real Alien.”

About the Author:


Christina Szalinski is a science writer with a PhD in Cell Biology from the University of Pittsburgh.