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Researchers from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) have reported that a cheap microscope connected to a smartphone camera could find wider application in many areas, and in some cases potentially replace more expensive equipment. The Foldscope is a handheld microscope made mostly of paper that can be connected to a smartphone camera. It has a magnification of around 140x and can identify objects just 2 micrometres wide. It was created by the Stanford University researchers in 2014 and costs around ₹400. 

The researchers found that foldscopes could capture the roundness and aspect ratio of an object to within 5% of those captured by state­of­the­art instruments called scanning electron microscopes (SEM), which cost more than ₹50 lakh each. They also report that based on their findings, foldscopes can be used in pharmaceuticals (to inspect CM YK drug products), environmental science (pollutants), and cosmetics (powders and emulsions), among other areas. 

P. Anbazhagan, Associate Professor in IISc’s Department of Civil Engineering and the corresponding author of the study paper, said in an email that foldscopes can be used to study “soil particles’ morphology”, which can “help understand soil structure, nutrient availability, and plant growth” in agriculture. The paper was published in the journal Current Science on February 25, co­authored by Dr. Anbazhagan and his former PhD student, Kunjari Mog. Their focus was on the shape of soil grains. 

India’s soil classification scheme doesn’t include grain shape because, according to Dr. Anbazhagan, measuring it accurately is “complex” and due to “the limited availability of affordable image capturing instruments”. The scheme classifies soil based on size, consistency, and susceptibility to deformation. Yet, shape matters because it influences how much water some soil can hold and how the soil responds to physical stresses. 

The classification schemes work around the difficulties of assessing shape by using other measures. Dr. Anbazhagan and Dr. Mog studied whether a foldscope could bridge this gap. They collected sand from four places in 2018: the beds of the Manu and the Brahmaputra rivers, sand unearthed by an earthquake in Tripura in 2017, and sand from a metre underground in Kalpakkam, Tamil Nadu. All four were coarse­grained soil with particles 0.32­0.47 mm wide.