Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
tems, the costs of the commercial physics educational equipment are trivial and are thus only
a small factor in the decision-making process. Yet at many high schools in America, a teach-
er's yearly budget for supplies may only be $1000 for everything, and costs play a much more
significant role. As it currently appears, the U.S. investment in education will continue to at-
rophy, the ability to reduce the costs of educational materials should not be understated even
for the largest economy in the world. Even at fortunate institutions, money saved on open-
source printable equipment can be invested in more sophisticated commercial equipment,
faster computers, more teachers or teachers' aids, or other areas to improve student learning.
Besides economic savings, the ability to custom fabricate equipment with tolerable accuracy
and precision for elementary-, middle- and high-school education in basic science, chemistry,
and physics can save teachers time, similar to the benefits enjoyed by professional researchers.
So for example, the rod holder could be easily adapted in OpenSCAD to the diameter of a
birthday candle, again significantly reducing the cost of any light source, while saving the
teacher the time in making a new design. With the open-source optics library, many middle-
school, high-school and college-level experiments can be performed. The students could be
responsible for creating the scales on paper secured directly under the rail, which could also
be used to draw and label a ray diagram that includes the positions of the light source, lens
and viewing screen. The students could learn to describe the image, real or virtual, upright or
inverted, larger than object or smaller, gaining knowledge about the properties of the mirrors
and lenses. As a useful exercise, students within the classes could be responsible for fabric-
ating some of their own optics equipment with 3-D printers, or improving designs; this con-
struction activity would cultivate students' practical abilities and exposes them to useful en-
gineering skills (e.g. geometry, CAD and additive layer manufacturing) as well as the open-
source philosophy.
Finally, it should be noted that there are substantial energy and environmental savings
does not provide a relatively large environmental burden, it again is useful as a teaching tool
for students when considering the design of other more substantively environmentally de-
structive types of equipment. Such discussions can help tie technical efficiency of energy con-
version devices discussions in a physics class to what students are learning about in an en-
vironmental science course. Finally, as the RepRap and the recyclebot technology are highly
be used to easy to support optics education in rural areas or developing countries and educa-
6.2.3 Limitations and future work needed
There are several limitations of the open-source optics library described here. First, it is far
from complete. There are hundreds of additional optical components that could be developed
using this method that have not been designed yet. We grow the library as we need compon-
ents from our work as do other labs working in the field, but there is much left to do. Please
jump in and help! At the same time, there are many components that cannot be developed
with the current technologies discussed here (e.g. lenses). There is considerable work in pro-
gress to make more functional printed materials and the idea of printing a nanoscale super
lens or Fresnel lenses from transparent material is within the realm of near-future possibility.
Second, there is sometimes a tradeoff between precision and cost, for both commercial optical
equipment and the open-source home-made or lab-made variants discussed in this topic. For
example, the fundamental properties of the RepRap limit printed part resolution. The 0.5 mm
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