Trying to answer the question: How can I know more about something I consume on a daily basis?

The first thing I think of when it comes to coffee is why do I consume coffee in the first place? 
I consume coffee not only because of its flavor but also because it has caffeine which provides me with a boost of energy throughout the day. This leads me to wonder: How can foldscope help me determine how much caffeine is in my coffee or how the flavor of coffee differs? 

In short, foldscope can exactly answer these questions; but foldscope can allow us to understand the general idea of how this works.

According to my research there’s two ways we can identify the amount of caffeine in coffee:

The Advanced Mode: Using a Mass Spectrometer
For the most accurate caffeine content measurements, you can use a Mass Spectrometer. However, this method can get expensive, and you'll have to prepare multiple samples of your coffee brewed the same way and send them off to an analytical chemistry lab.

A Rough Estimation Method:
If you want a rough idea of the caffeine content in your coffee, here’s a method you can use:
Weigh the dry coffee in grams and multiply by 0.008. This method gives you 80mg off caffeine for each 10g of dry coffee.

Weakly extracted coffee might yield 0.6% of its weight in caffeine, while very strongly extracted coffee might get close to 1% caffeine.

These numbers are for typical 100% Arabica or mostly Arabica blends. 100% Robusta beans could be about double the caffeine.

https://medium.com/@tarek.tm/how-to-estimate-caffeine-content-in-coffee-db5c8c20ba0d#:~:text=The%20Advanced%20Mode%3A%20Using%20a,to%20an%20analytical%20chemistry%20lab.

It’s said that under an electron microscope, coffee should look like small crystals. In my findings you can somewhat see what looks like crystals under the microscope. 

Looking at Coffee under a microscope
In my research I found a post made on medium of a person using a different type of portable microscope exploring a similar topic: coffee. Here are some pictures of what this creator was able to capture in his findings: 

Coffee grounds


Roasted Coffee Bean

Here’s the portable microscope this creator used: 



Looking at a wet mount: 
Does mounting liquid coffee on a slide change the way we see it in the microscope?

The initial focus is on the wet mount of coffee, where hydration introduces a transformative dimension to the coffee's microstructure.
 
Microscopic examination of the wet coffee mount unveils the impact of water on cellular components, providing insights into the hydration-induced alterations that influence the overall appearance and structural integrity of coffee specimens.






Using Foldscope V1:
Using Foldscope V2 340XFoldscope V2 140X

50X
Foldscope V2 340X
Looking at a dry mount: 

In the absence of water, we are able to observe a distinct set of microstructural features such as more crystal like structures. Dehydration influences cellular arrangements and potentially accentuates certain characteristics unique to the dry state.

Foldscope V1:

Foldscope V2:
I’m not quite sure the other creator Robert McKeon used in to look at this coffee in depth but I will say that his portable microscope got much better results than mine. Maybe I’m doing something wrong? I used both the first Foldscope and the second Foldscope and I feel like neither one gave me the same results as Robert McKeon.

Regardless, It was interesting to look at coffee up close in the Foldscope.