Ashwat Prasanna
Laser Microscope
This is a simple similar-to-a-microscope creation, that can show the outline (insides, if it is clear) or surface of a microscopic object. Although in theory, the magnification of the projection could be infinite, there are practical limitations.
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It involves focussing a laser beam onto an object, through a convex lens. This is a low power laser beam, in order to avoid burning the object. The laser beam can either (depending on the microscope's configuration) reflect off, and map the reflections onto a wall, and show the surface (which can be used to look at the surface of even a CD), or it can travel through the object and the air around it to make a projection of the outline, shape and internals of an object, which can be used to magnify a grain of salt around 100 times!
Telescopes
These are all homemade telescopes, which have been used to look at the moon and the night sky in detail:
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- This is a telescope with 2 lenses - a convex and a concave. This is a refractor telescope. It converges the rays to a close point, then brings them back to being parallel with the concave lens. There is a practical limit, due to chromatic aberration, caused by different wavelengths of light being refracted by different amounts. The length is adjustable, to adjust zoom
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- This is a telescope with 3 lenses - one convex and two concave. This is the same as the above telescope, with one lens removable and an adjustable body length. The second concave lens makes the step of diverging the rays more effective and produces a more clear image. There is less noticeable chromatic aberration.
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- This is the same as the second one, but with much larger lenses, and an adjustable body length. The larger lenses allow more light in, and allow the surroundings to be seen, along with larger objects. This makes it better to observe objects such as the moon, due to its large aperture. It features two concave lenses (one smaller to match the area exposed to light), which allow the image to be more clear and chromatic aberration to be less noticeable.
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- This is another refractor telescope. It is the largest of all and features a body from a toy telescope, and one of its lenses. This is as it is of adjustable length and its rigid structure. It has two smaller concave lenses at the other end. While it has a small aperture, it has a high magnification and little chromatic aberration. It can be used to see the craters of the moon in reasonable detail, and the surface of the moon.
UltraVision
UltraVision… the tool that makes you focus… literally. Even if you move your VR headset, look around, it always looks at the same object, or part of the object. That makes it handy for when you need to measure something accurately, or when you are soldering. With a simple camera zoom, all motion and vibration gets amplified, making it unusable. This prevents that from happening, and comes with an AR ruler which is to scale, in case you need it.
It uses an app running on a VR headset, which analyses its surroundings in 3D with depth perception, recognising planes and surfaces. Tapping on a surface sets an invisible physical object there. Every frame, the processor identifies the angle of the anchor, and it’s position on the screen. From this, the user is displayed with a localised video feed. Tapping on the image also zooms in at various levels. Tapping on the right side also adds an object where it has been tapped - but this time a ruler. Turning your device can change the angle at which the ruler is dropped.