PHYSICS INVESTIGATORY PROJECT

TOPIC: LASER MICROSCOPE

PROJECT PREPARED BY :
NAME : PRATIKSHA .P. DESHMUKH
CLASS : XII-C
SESSION : 2019-2020
BOARD ROLL NO. :
SCHOOL : DAV INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL
ACKNOWLEDGE
It is a genuine pleasure to express my deep sense of thanks and
gratitude to my physics teacher Mrs. Anagha Tagare as well as
our principal Mrs. Seema Maindiratta to provide me the
wonderful opportunity to do this delightful project on the topic
laser microscope, which helped me to link the textual
knowledge to practical life issues and helped in doing a lot
research. I am really grateful to lab assistant teacher Mrs. Kavita
for resolving my doubts at the earliest.

Lastly, I would like to thanks my parents who provided

constant support and resources and my classmates and friends
for encouraging me to finalize the project in the given time
constraint.
 INDEX :

SNO. CONTENT PAGE NO.

1. INTRODUCTION 4
2. AIM 5
3. APPARATUS 6
4. THEORY 7
5. CONSTRUCTION 9
6. DIAGRAM 10
7. MODEL PHOTO 11
8. WORKING 12
9. ADVANTAGES 13
10. APPLICATIONS 13
11. CONCLUSION 14
12. BIBLIOGRAPHY 15
INTRODUCTION

Due to a growing interest in biology among science students, using

demonstration experiments in physics classes that involve observations of
biological material or that relate to plant, animal, or human physiology can
often raise student motivation. The experiment described below involves
observation of microorganisms in a drop of pond water. An explanation of
the image formation in the paraxial region is then given using geometrical
optics.
Beginning with the invention of the first microscope, humans have been
fascinated by the observation of microscopic life. In his spare time, Dutch
draper Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723) made his own single-lens
microscope using a small glass sphere. Keeping de Water-Drop Projector
tailed records of his observations, he made the first drawing of a bacterium in
1683. Articles describing construction of a simple variation of
Leeuwenhoek’s microscope (glass tubing microscope) have appeared
previously in TPT. However, it is easier still to build a single-lens microscope
by using a drop of clear water instead of a glass lens. The small water drop
works as a spherical lens with a large magnifying power.
AIM : A drop water becomes a spherical lens when suspended from a
syringe. Shine a green laser through the center of the water drop and bring to
life the tiny world inside.
APPARATUS

1. Syringes

2. Glasses

3. Green Laser pen

THEORY
The drop at the end of the syringe, though not a perfect sphere, can be treated
as a small spherical lens. The light beam that falls on the drop refracts both
times as it passes through the water-air interface. Let’s follow the path of the
ray that enters the water drop just above an object that floats in the water drop
at a small distance x from the geometrical axis. The ray will refract twice and
reach the screen at the distance y below the geometrical axis. The distance y
is determined by the distance from the drop to the screen d and the angle of
deviation, which can be calculated using simple geometry:

( where for the water and air n =1.33 and n0 = 1.0, respectively), and with sin
= x/r, the angle is given by the equation:

For the rays close to the geometrical axes (paraxial region), all the angles in
the calculation above are very small; therefore, the expression for can be
simplified using the approximation arcsin(z) z:
The projected image on the screen is a magnified shadow of the object
(animal) with magnification equal to

where the approximation (tan) is valid in the paraxial region. For the water
drop 2 mm in diameter, the shadow image on the screen 2 m from the setup
is about 1000 times larger than the object. Note that in derivation we assumed
the object floats on the laser side of the drop. It can be seen from Fig. 1 that
the same shadow height can be produced by a smaller object placed on the
screen side of the drop (or anywhere in between). Clearly the magnification
is largest for the objects that are floating in the screen side of the drop. In this
case

in the paraxial region. For the parameters as given above, the magnification
factor is 1985. The results show that in the paraxial region, the magnification
depends on the position of the object along the geometrical axis but not on
the object’s distance from the axis.
 Construction
To make Laser Drop Microscope
1. Set up the dropper and 2 cups/glasses of equal height. The tap water in the
plastic cups is being used as a weight so that the dropper remains stable. The
Water in the dropper is from the water sample.

2. Water sample should appear as in the following image so that the laser can
be aimed through the drop of water and the microbes in the water sample
will be projected onto a wall or paper behind the drop. This will show the
thousands of microbes in a single drop of water.

In such way:

CAUTION: DO NOT AIM THE LASER LIGHT AT ANYONE’S FACE

OR EYES.
Ray diagram
Model photo
Working
Place the syringe holder on a table about two meters away from a screen or
white wall. Switch on the laser pointer and adjust the beam to point exactly
through the middle of the water drop and perpendicular to the screen. With
the right adjustment of the laser, a bright spot extends into a large round
image on the screen . Now, if your water is rich enough with little animals,
you should see their magnified shadow images floating and moving around
on the screen. Small single-cell animals like paramecium appear as dark spots
surrounded with interference fringe contours. Some of them exhibit
movements, but no detailed structure can be recognized. Here you can
clearly identify individual parts of their bodies and follow their movements.
In our case the images were projected on the white wall and photographs
were obtained with a digital camera. You may at first see nothing but the dark
floating spots surrounded by a few concentric circles caused by light
diffraction on small parts of decaying plants and single-cell protozoa. Be
patient. The light attracts the little animals (a green laser works best), and after
some time they swim down to the syringe nozzle and into the water drop.
You can also give them a little help by dripping a few drops from the syringe.
This works because the water drop is similar in shape to the lens of a real
microscope. A lens takes the light waves moving through it and bends them
so they start traveling outward as they leave the water drop. The laser beam
continues expanding until it hits the white surface. The microorganisms
swimming around in the water get in the way of the light, which means they
cast shadows inside the laser beam.
Advantages
The advantage of this method is the simple construction and the fact that you
can have many animals inside the syringe. The little animals attracted by the
light swim down into the drop by themselves. With the other methods, getting
the animals into the drop may be difficult, and the observation time is limited
by the evaporation of the drop.

Application
These alternatives can be used to observe the small animals in the water, and
the observed shadow images may be even better than those obtained with the
hanging water drop method.
Conclusion
And this one is even much simpler… just hold a small droplet of your sample into
the laser beam! The round shape of the droplet itself serves as a lens and thus
magnifies the projected beam. The smaller the droplet, the bigger the
magnification. But of course the diameter of the laser beam is usually around 1 –
2 mm, so you lose light if the droplet is even smaller than that. Try to use a
syringe that can make really small droplets. Because of the hanging droplet, there
is usually a lot of turbulence inside, so you’ll see many little speckles swirling
around for a while.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
 https://www.hackteria.org
 https://www.childrensmuseum.org/blog
 https://www.fmf.uni-lj.si/~planinsic/articles