GUWAHATI, Oct 13 - Cotton University in collaboration with the Regional Science Centre, Guwahati, recently held a workshop on Foldscope, sponsored by the Dept of Biotechnology, Govt of India for secondary school teachers and students.
The workshop was aimed at training the students and teachers with a new kind of microscope called Foldscope and also at evoking a sense of curiosity in the minds of the young generation to unfold the array of scientific tools.
�One thing that we all need to have is observation and freedom to explore the world around. Foldscope, an origami-based microscope that can be assembled in a few minutes, with a magnification as high as 140X or even more, gives us the freedom to explore almost anywhere, any time and it is much less expensive than a regular microscope,� said Dr Anjana Singha Naorem, coordinator of the workshop.
Dr Naorem also gave an account of the incidents which led the inventor of Foldscope, Dr Manu Prakash, a professor at Stanford University, to design this new form of optical instrument.
With instruments like Foldscope, science will no more remain confined within the boundaries of four walls of laboratories and can reach the masses. This was the idea behind developing such tools by Manu Prakash, and also spreading his idea of Frugal Science across the world.
Nearly 100 students of classes VIII to X and teachers from schools like Assam Jatiya Vidyalaya, Maharishi Vidya Mandir Silpukhuri and Maria�s Public School participated in the workshop.