Make Your Own Microscope

What you'll need:

A piece of fuse wire
Some water
Objects to look at (newspaper or a magazine with fine print works well


Instructions:

Make a loop at the end of the fuse wire about 2mm wide.
Dip it into some water to get a drop formed in the loop.
Hold it close to your eye and look closely at an object such as a magazine.
You may have to experiment to get the right distance but you should see a magnified image, especially if you have the drop as close to your eye as possible.


What's happening?

Pioneers of early microscopes originally used tiny glass globes filled with water to magnify objects, this is similar to what you are doing in this experiment. The water droplet forms the shape of a convex lens, which refracts the light and converges it at the point where you see the image clearly. It was later that the method of grinding glass to make lenses was perfected. Modern microscopes have many lenses in them and allow us to see extremely small objects.