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The microscope costs less than £50 to build using an open-source design and a common 3D printer. Plus: physicists discover the secret to perfect cacio e pepe pasta.

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Liam M. Rooney/University of Strathclyde

Under the microscope

The world’s first fully 3D-printed microscope can be made in a few hours and for a fraction of the cost of traditional ones. “It’s not just enabling, it’s empowering,” says Gail McConnell at the University of Strathclyde in the UK. She and her colleagues previously worked out how to 3D-print lenses like those used in microscopes, which led to the breakthrough. For the body of the microscope, researchers used a design from OpenFlexure, a publicly available resource for 3D-printing scientific instruments. Then, they added the 3D-printed, clear plastic lenses they designed, a store-bought camera and a light source, all of which were controlled by a Raspberry Pi computer processor. Read more

Perfect pasta

Physicists have discovered the key to a consistently delicious cacio e pepe pasta, a traditional Italian dish made with black pepper and pecorino cheese. Ivan Di Terlizzi at the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Germany and his colleagues tested how the consistency of cacio e pepe sauce changed in hundreds of different recipes and developed science-backed guidance for how to stop it becoming lumpy. “I was cooking a lot, and 50 per cent of the time that I was preparing cacio e pepe, I [messed] it up, and this was so terrible for my pride – I couldn’t understand why,” says Di Terlizzi. Read more

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Victor Watts/Shutterstock

Gerald Durrell’s memoir Myself & Other Animals has been released posthumously to celebrate the centenary of the conservationist’s birth. Reading it makes you feel like an archaeologist uncovering an ancient mosaic, writes Chris Simms. As you leaf through a section, you reveal the colourful sparkle of a new fragment. It isn’t a complete picture, but by the end, you can see enough to feel you know Gerald Durrell just that bit better. The book ranges from some of the highlights of his early days in India, England and Corfu, to his expeditions across the world to collect animals for zoos, to his battle to create his own zoo, which he finally managed to set up on Jersey in the UK. Read more

Brighten up your January

If you are looking for a way to make the most of January, New Scientist Shop is packed full of products designed to spark curiosity and inspiration - perfect for turning the month into an exciting adventure of learning and discovery.

Thanks for reading!

This week's new last word questions are: "Why don’t trees rot in the ground, while wooden structures do if they aren’t built properly?"

and

"If humans needed to hibernate, how would civilisation have developed?"

Alexandra Thompson

Assistant news editor, New Scientist
Email me at [email protected]

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