Liquid Lens Microscope

Your task:

After building the microscope illustrated at the right, you will need to do some experimenting with it.

Variables to be considered:

Things which could easily be varied on the liquid lens microscope include:

• The liquid being tested
• The diameter of the lens hole
• The thickness of the lens plate
• The amount of liquid in the "drop" which forms the lens
• The type of illumination used

Practical considerations:

• For safety reasons water only should be the liquid tested

Standards:

In order to test a variable, a set of standards or criteria must be developed. As an experimental team, you need to develop your own standards or criteria. If you are testing only for "Which hole diameter provides the best lens", then as a team you must define what is meant by "best lens".

"Best lens" might mean a number of things:

• easiest to focus
• provides the brightest image
• is the highest power
• provides a good depth of field

The "best lens" might even vary with the use intended for the lens. Such things should be considered when setting up standards for evaluating a variable.

Once your team has chosen a variable to explore and the standards are decided upon, your team will need to design their experiment for testing the variable. The data chart for recording all results will need to be designed. Then, based upon your team's standards and their experimental results, a conclusion will need to be reached. All of this needs to be written up in proper scientific format.

Note: In this lab activity students from different teams might well be experimenting with an assortment of variables. This is OK. Your team might well be testing a variable that other teams are not testing.

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