Last month we wrote about how the small focusing lens inside a laser pointer can be repurposed as a cheap macro lens for your smartphone. After seeing this project online, photo enthusiast John Coleman decided to give it a shot. To keep the lens secure against your phone, you’ll need something to hold it (e.g. a hair pin) and some tape to attach the holder to the phone. The photo above shows the super simple attachment Coleman created.
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Ever wonder what a vinyl record looks like under an electron microscope? Okay, probably not. Luckily, there’s people who do, including Chris Supranowitz, who created a number of electron microscope images for a course at the University of Rochester.

Here’s a photograph of the record grooves captured by Supranowitz at 500x magnification. Those dark chunks you see are dust particles.

This one was shot at 1000x magnification. The record begins to look like the Grand Canyon.

These images were created in the Spring of 2005 for the course Opt 307/407: Practical Electron Microscopy and Advanced Topics. Other projects used the electron microscope to examine such things as snowflakes and bird feathers.

To see more of the amazing images captured by Supranowitz, check out the final project page.

(via Reckon)