Name: A 50-cent microscope that folds like origami
Uploaded: 2014-03-07T15:59:28Z
Duration: 9 min 7 s
Description: Perhaps you’ve punched out a paper doll or folded an origami swan? TED Fellow Manu Prakash and his team have created a microscope made of paper that's just as easy to fold and use. A sparkling demo that shows how this invention could revolutionize healthcare in developing countries … and turn almost anything into a fun, hands-on science experiment.

Perhaps you’ve punched out a paper doll or folded an origami swan? TED Fellow Manu Prakash and his team have created a microscope made of paper that's just as easy to fold and use. A sparkling demo that shows how this invention could revolutionize healthcare in developing countries … and turn almost anything into a fun, hands-on science experiment.

A 50-cent microscope that folds like origami

A simple sheet of folded paper can become a powerful microscope, costing just 50 cents to produce. This breakthrough tool brings critical diagnostic abilities to places where traditional microscopes are too expensive or impractical. In regions where over a billion people are at risk for diseases like malaria, such innovations take science out of the lab and into the hands of health workers and students. The rugged, portable design even survives a trip through the wash or a tumble from high floors.

A Paper Microscope Makes Global Disease Detection Possible

How we combined origami and optical design

First the microscope, now the chemistry set