Week 2: We are on our right track! (Material extraction)

     WEEK 2 : MATERIAL EXTRACTION

After a series of discussion and suggestion by our lecturer, Dr. Woon Kai Lin, the final title that we decided to go on is "Polarizing Microscope Using Smartphone".

This title may seem shocking for some of us, as we might think "Smartphone to become a microscope??!''

                                         How is that even possible?!  😮

However, after a series of internet research and discussion among our team, we are ready to face this challenge and bring up something exciting! Below are the some updates and progression done by our group, enjoy~

As mentioned from the previous post, the major component required for a polarizing microscope is a polarizer, we are lucky enough to get a free laptop from our lecturer in order to extract the polarizer from the laptop screen! Thank you, Dr! :D

And yes some tools in the yellow box to let us open up the laptop.

But first, let's do some research about the internal component of a laptop first before opening it up to prevent any accident damage done on the laptop.

This is how a laptop screen should looks like based on the internet.

        

Time to open up and look for what we want!

After the back cover and the keyboard is opened up.

The laptop screen. Polarizer film is just so near to us now!

Taking out the PCB that attached to the monitor.

After the cover around the screen and the internal structure was removed, this is what it looks like. The polarizer film is stick firmly on the LCD glass.

Therefore we need to tear the film out.

This is exactly the essence that our group are looking for! The polarization film.

Okay, now that we have extracted the material we need, should be done for this week.

But wait, aren't it will be better if we have a lens attached on our microscope to narrow down the light beam so that we can have a more focused and sharp image on our smartphone later?

 Exactly!

We then bought a laser pointer from some random grocer to extract the lens inside. This is because laser pointer produces such a sharp point when we turned it on, there must be something inside that we are looking for!

 

This is the picture of the laser pointer that we opened it up.

And this is the reason behind why a laser pointer produces such a sharp point -- the lens!

That's all for this week from Team Sotong.

 Continue to stay tuned on our blog weekly to get our update and progression. 

Have a good day, everyone! 😁

XOXO 💘,

Team Sotong