How to Make a Microscope From Scratch 

Give me your suggestions of what you'd like me to check out with my microscope! I'll do a video with the footage of it next week!

Could you dedicate a couple of videos to perfecting your glass making?

Actually I find that these failures show even more how precise modern technology is and why it took to long to develop it.

it'd be very interesting if you could try to make a flute? or other wind instruments. extract some clay, make a stone furnace, and all that, and voila a built from the ground up clay flute/ocarina!

I'm slowly transitioning the channel into being just cat videos.

You should team up with *Primitive Technology* and make a survival series where you and the other guy are dumped on an island and you have to survive there for 6 months.

Watching the different approaches you take to making glass is fascinating, and I really don't care if you fail. It highlights how difficult it is to make something we take for granted, and it means there can be more videos with you slowly refining the method/ingredients down until you make that perfect glass! Awesome video, and I look forward to many more.

These videos have very good quality please keep the hard work up.

You should be able to get the sulfur out of the shells by "roasting" them, it's used in refining ores as well, recrystallizing the potash a few times will also get rid of most impurities remaining.

Can you make a battery from scratch and use it to turn on a lightbulb made from scratch?

You should have purified your resources not only more physically but in addition chemically. My ideas for the next try are as following: Potash: Improve the purity of the potash by multiple recrystallizations, that is, redissolving your product with the smallest possible amount of water, extract impurities and boil the water away. For nearly pure potassium nitrate you could try to find a source of saltpeter. Calcium Carbonate (from eggshells): Firstly, as you did, pulverize your eggshells. Then burn your powder above 800-900°C under a high oxygen atmosphere (maybe use a fan) to get rid of organic compounds (they are charred and the carbon is oxidized to carbon dioxide). This will form calcium oxide, e.g. quicklime, which is highly insoluble in water but particularly good at absorbing sulfur by forming calcium sulfide. Sadly both quicklime and calcium sulfide are highly insoluble in water, but quicklime will react quite vigorous with water to form calcium hydroxide, which is really soluble in water. Because of that, you can filter off the calcium sulfide and treat the calcium hydroxide solution by bubbling carbon dioxide through it (use your breath or mix some vinegar with uncleaned lime or eggshells) to form nearly pure calcium carbonate. (I don't propose a treatment purely with strong acids because then he needs to make those by himself) Silicon dioxide (from quartz sand): Heat your sand after removing iron compounds using magnetism to get rid of organic compounds General: Maybe use an oxidizing agent (like saltpeter) to reduce discoloration because of transition metal compounds. Add some zinc oxide to reduce the melting point of your glass. Add some baking soda to reduce the formation of bubbles.

Love these optics videos! It's incredible that, even with all the extra effort you put into purifying your ingredients, your glass is still so opaque. Based on your tries, I can't believe how the clear glass we have today has been "discovered".

This channel deserves way more subs for all the effort that goes into making each of these projects

this production quality on these videos is nuts. its like these could run on television and no one would bat an eye lid!

this channel makes you appreciate clear glass

Foldscope is one of the most amazing projects that I have seen in a long time. It has a lot of potential to help a lot of people.

You sir are the epitome of DIY. amazing. Best wishes. Looking forward to more.

9:57 HEY THATS PRETTY GOOD

i seriously cannot believe how a channel like you with such good content is only in the 200k subs zone, absolutely unbelievable!

For as inexpensive as those fold scopes are I gotta get one, and they're doing great work with them too. Also, awesome close up camera work when melting the glass tubes. That was cool.

Dude, because of you I found out about foldscope, I made my own, it magnifies at about 80-90X but still i've been able to see lots of micro life. Thank you

hahaha man I love seeing your attempts at glass! I look forward to you mastering that skill in the future

These videos need more publicity they are good!

I just love this videos. Please make more...

Easily one of my top 5 favorite RU-vid channels.

How are top quality contents like this video are getting less views than childish adults screaming into their microphones

Wait, this show won an Emmy?? If it did Great Job!

persistence is a great skill - Thanks and good luck in the next rounds

0:50 banana for scale?

I liked ur Effort and grace Good One Bro Keep it up. Loved watching it

Thanks again every video is like a mini adventure intona subject!

Very instructive video! Do you have any idea of the radius of your glass beads made from the glass rods?

i got a lot of old spray paint cans (that have a ball inside). i opened them, removed the ball, and cleaned the glass marble, and several were perfect for magnifying lenses! i used soda bottle caps and necks, to hold the glass marble inside... (i had 7 old cans, and 6 had perfect glass marbles for lenses, so i put 2 together and made an adjustable microscope!!)

not related to the microscope but one thing i'd love to see you try to make is a super rudimentary computer. no microchips or anything crazy like that but some basic transistors and some home made copper wire? would be neat...

Do you have a TV show yet? You should have a TV, show dude. The quality of these videos is amazing.

Your videos are awesome, the quality is just astonishing. You should sell this to Discovery channel or national geographic. I mean, this channel is going places, fame awaits you!!!!!

The visual gags are always amazing.

Thumbs up for your kitty helper!

Years ago I built a microscope, but not nearly from scratch. I salvaged an eye lens from an old camera's viewfinder. The objective lens came from a #222 flashlight bulb, and was glued into a thimble. I used a thin metal tube for the body, probably from a cigar package. I experimentally determined the correct distance spacing between the two lens. I probably got somewhere between 100-200x magnification, with a fair amount of color fringing.

Good job 👍👍👍

Years ago, someone on YT made a chicken sandwich from scratch. Literally from scratch from growing the wheat, hatching chicken from an egg, goring a cow from a calf, churning the milk into cheese, etc. He estimated that his one chicken sandwich cost him over $1 Million...

Last time you had blue-green, this time you had yellow. Keep this up and eventually you will have a rainbow of glass. :)

This channel needs more views

Would you consider refining iron from iron oxidizing bacteria ( a type of slime found around creeks and swamps) and maybe making a tool from the recovered metal? I would greatly enjoy seeing that.

This channel inspire me to want to do things like this

Please keep up the attempts at making glass. It's a really interesting process, with a bunch of differing techniques and possible routes to success.

Great video

dude you're awesome!!!

Did all the glass you made turn yellow or just the one bead you tried making into a lens? Because carbon contamination from burning hydrocarbons too could of made their way into it while blasting. The regular glass being so smooth would have little issue with this, but your porous glass could catch and trap the soot, discoloring the glass.

Unfortunately I can't donate money. But I watch the ads on the video all the way so I can help at least a little. (If the ad is skipped then the channel doesn't receive money or not as much)

well good to see you took some of my suggestions, you mixed but you didn't skim or cook for long enough. I still maintain that you need to replace some potassium with sodium as the venetians did so many years ago to make the first cristallo.

When is telescope video coming ? Excited to see it working.

This is an amazing video! It works! It gives me the enthusiasm to make my own things too For making that spherical lense Can I melt the glass in an ordinary stove from the kitchen? or Can I make my own lense cutting the bottom of a glass bottle and then polish it?

I need this for home experiments

From my understanding, the goop on the top of the potash mixture is probably salts coming out of solution. When you boil the mixture, the things with less solubility precipitate out and become insoluble, but only while its hot. Should try filtering the hot mix when you reduce to about half of the starting liquid then letting it settle while cooling.

This helped me on my science class

Some one tell me this guy has to be the king of diy projects

hey that's pretty good!

Please do a series on how to make a knife!

Try taking a bath or shower from scratch. Make things like fresh water, soap, and a brush or washcloth. Love the videos!

I'm surprised videos with this much quality hasn't been seen by everyone

This series gives me renewed appreciation for the movie threads. Basically if nuclear war broke out all our stuff will suck

I just realized I wasn't subbed I am now thanks!

fyi, you get a lot more/cleaner potash with a really hot fire. start with hardwood, and use a blower to pump air into the fire. If the ash comes out black and still has bits of charcoal in it, the fire wasn't hot enough: the hotter the fire, the cleaner the ash should come out. Same deal with the kiln: heat from the bottom (heat rises), and blast air in to boost. You can hold heat better by just making a covered hole in the ground with an opening for fuel/air feed rather than stacking bricks in the open. You'd also get a much hotter fire off with a bag of legit coke from a foundry and a blower than with a propane torch. You can always bake the sulphur out of green coal to make your own coke too.

Could there be a way you could react or remove the sulfur from the crushed eggshells, such as turning it into a gas (in a well ventilated environment, obviously)

Psst... Can i have some of that *"White powder there?"*

Foldscope looks pretty fun.

loving the cat

You should get in touch with CodysLab. Bet you guys would be able to do a lot of interesting, knowledgeable stuff together.

You should do a project where you build a car like you build the engine, the chassis, the wheels and so on and it could like a 10 part series you do over time

If you decide to try to make glass again soon, you might check out a few videos by Nile Red, he details how to obtain calcium carbonate from eggs and from antacids

Make a foundry from clay, you will probably need it for iron, glass and other projects later on :-)

Have you tried using HHO gas to get it hotter than a kiln?

Maybe try experimenting with small batches using a torch? That way you can get the mixture/materials right without using a bunch.

can i use a lens from old broken glasses? sand it down to a good size?

this man might as well make a Spaceship from scratch

I like how they don't as for likes and subscribes, they just ask to support them.

You should do a "How to make a camera from scratch" video!

Lightning strikes can cause sand to turn into really neat glass structures. Might have more success if you attempt that route to making glass?

7:02 Making glasses and kicking asses

The Fold Scope kinda reminds me of van Leeuwenhoek... oh..... Max said that!

Andy, I love the show but it's SO frustrating to watch you work. NOTHING EVER WORKS RIGHT. It's clear how hard you work at it, too. That really speaks to the amount of knowledge and skill it takes to actually pull off some of the modern miracles we take for granted. Keep it up. Thanks!

Could you burn off the sulfur from the egg? I would absolutely love to see y'all try and try to get the best glass y'all can get. I think it would be a fun video/series. The problem of impurities might actually make for a great collab opportunity with chemist RU-vidrs like CodysLab.

this is a great video and also your channel i like you

thats veryyy veryyy interesting

Did not know you won an Emmy, congrats guys! (you can see it at 9:45)

This video is awesome, but I gave the thumbs up for the cat.

Andy's goal in life is to make see through glass.

make a telescope i want to see you make that clear glass

you didnt make that cat from scratch, that's cheating ! extremely adorable nonetheless.

Hi Andy, if you by any chance need some more magnets, I can help out. I too live in the Twin Cities and through my job have accumulated a good collection of rare earth magnets. So say you want to make a long line of magnets or a flat array for further separating iron, let me know!

Darn on glassmaking but nice progress!

Thanks for following me back on twitter

*puts sunglasses on* - instant Dimitri Vladimir

The cat is like : my human trap another human in his box

Rather than paper for the glass holder, use some thin 1.5 mm abs piece with a hole and trap a water drop.Surface tension will lock the drop in the hole.

If it's very hard to make glass this way, then think how hard it was for ancient people to make vases...

It's weird that something in your glass makes these bubbles. 8:14 The normal glass doesn't do this. What's could be the cause of that? If it wouldn't have these bubbles the slight yellow colors won't matter much I think.

The two big problems from making the glass was the different eggs you used and you needed much more heat as why there was so much bubbles in the glass and why it took so long.

The solution is to filter the solution of potash through 4-5 coffee filters. Then crystallize slowly with great care. Also premelt the sand before you use it and use the clear bits in the final step. This should theoretically work. Take the clear bits and crush it into sand.