Wednesday, September 1, 2021

Explore Outdoors ~ Water Droplet Magnifier

 

Yesterday morning I was out in the garden watching bees, and I happened to notice water droplets clinging to the hairy lupine leaves. When I looked closer, I could see how the droplet in the center worked as a magnifier. Got me thinking about times when I've dripped water onto a page of the New Yorker, and how the print was magnified.

Water droplets make fine magnifiers - and if you took a trip in the Way-Back machine you would find some scientists using water droplets as microscopes. So why not make your own water-droplet magnifier? All you need is water and some plastic. You can use clear plastic from an old soda bottle or even hard plastic that was used in packaging for batteries or something.

Here's some fun experiments from Scientific American.

And here's a video, with an idea of how to use a water droplet to turn your cell phone camera into a macro lens.

Have fun!

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