Turn Your Phone into a Microscope

What if you need to look at something really small but you don’t have a microscope? You can can try taking a close-up picture with a smartphone or camera (use the ‘macro’ setting if it has one) and then magnify the image by zooming in on the picture using a PC or tablet screen.

Alternatively, we’re going to show you how to hack your phone to turn it into a microscope. You don’t need any technical skills or special equipment – just some honey!

Honey Lens Hack

You can buy magnifying lenses which are designed to sit over a phone camera lens, but our video shows you how to use a drop of honey as a temporary magnifying lens. You don’t need much, just these five things:

  • Scissors
  • Clear plastic packaging (e.g. plastic fruit carton)
  • Blu tak (or similar)
  • Teaspoon
  • Clear honey (if your honey has gone solid, the video shows you what to do to solve this)

You’ll probably need to experiment a bit with the size of honey drop you use exactly how far from the lens to position it to get the best image. With a little bit of practice you should be able to make a useful temporary magnifying lens.

We would love to hear how you get on, so please let us know using the Contact Us page, or by emailing us at hopelearning@oum.ox.ac.uk.

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