Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

In the last few years there has been an influx of fun/pointless/interesting/small/useful USB powered devices, and you will be hard pushed to find something you can’t power using USB.  However, amid the rubbish that you can find (like the USB powered fragrance oil burner) there is occasionally one that is genuinely interesting, and this is one of them.

For those of you who think science is cool and wish you had a microscope or who just like looking at small stuff, the USB Microscope is for you. Although perhaps designed for the younger generations, people of any age can have fun looking at anything under a microscope, and in pretty good quality too.  It has a resolution of up to 1600x1200 which is not bad and looking at a screen definitely beats looking into a tiny hole.  Naturally, there is a pretty good zoom.  Keep reading for more details.

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Those that have seen the Harry Potter movies may remember his magic cloak that enabled him to be invisible from those around him. Sounds a bit fantastical and far-fetched doesn’t it? Well, the future may be closer than you think.

The ability to hide something from sight, is usually accomplished by using what is known as a superlens. This type of lens contains a negative refraction index,  the “refraction” part obviously meaning bending. In this case it allows it to bend electromagnetic waves back upon themselves. So, as a result, the object appears “invisible.“ Voila! No bulky cloak even needed.

Although superlensing isn’t exactly yet feasible for making something huge like a military warship invisible, there is still promise for more standard large objects. This is being done using copper-based meta-materials to create a type of cloaking cylinder.  Work is also being done on the lenses by Graeme Millton, of the University of Utah, who is currently working in mathematical models for the superlenses. 

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