No home or classroom may be complete without a microscope. Build this inexpensive high-resolution instrument with Legos and readily available lenses designed for modern smartphone cameras.

The plans for the fully functional, high-resolution microscope with capabilities approaching those of a modern research microscope are open source, courtesy of researchers from University of Münster and University of Göttingen, Germany. After the assembly instructions were followed by a test group of 9 to 13-year-old children, the researchers observed that these budding scientists significantly increased their knowledge of microscopy.

A paper describing the research is published in the journal The Biophysicist 2021.