NTU students Elysia and Christopher emerged winners in the 2021 Grass Roots Student Project Competition organised by RS Components, an MNC which specialises in electronics, automation and control components. Their project, the Remotely-Controlled Biological Microscope, was developed for the Making & Tinkering undergraduate course, which is offered by CoS. They were awarded a £1,000 cash prize.
In the Making & Tinkering course (also open to non-CoS students), students are grouped into teams and expected to put the knowledge they learnt in their disciplines into good practical use, building something useful by the end of the course.
For teammates Elysia and Christopher, they decided to make improvements to a device they use regularly in school – the microscope. Not only did they note that prolonged use of a microscope usually led to neck strain and tired eyes, but they felt that the need to stay in the lab to observe the changes in the sample may be time inefficient.
The Remotely-Controlled Biological Microscope
With those issues in mind, the team set out to modify the existing conventional microscope with a remote control capability to address the abovementioned ergonomic issues and reduce physical contact between the users and the samples. This resulted in the Remotely-Controlled Biological Microscope. To find out more about the microscope, click here.
About the Grass Roots Student Project Competition
The Grass Roots Student Project Competition is organised by RS Components, and awards students for sharing their projects with the world. To find out more, click here.
About Making & Tinkering
PS9888 Making & Tinkering is an undergraduate course offered by CoS which provides students with the opportunity to solve open-ended real life problems together with their friends from different disciplines. It is also open to non-CoS students. To find out more, click here.