When I was a child, I was fascinated by fall; the leaves changing colors, eventually being pushed from the tree by wind, signaling the changing of the seasons was so beautiful and also in some ways sad. It was the time where school started and also where so many things changed so fast for myself and many other kids. I would always pick up leaves and look at them as if they could tell me about the world. I would do this with sticks, flowers, weeds, moss, but I of course didn't have the scientific knowledge or the ability to focus on it for too long as I had other things to do or study. I eventually stopped picking up these leaves and other plants as the day-to-day thrum of life pulled me quickly from one hobby, interest, goal to the next.

Today, when I was outside, I saw a pile of leaves in the corner besides Fine Hall, where my lab section was located. Due to our upcoming assignment on the microcosmos, I walked over and picked up a few leaves before settling on the "perfect" dead leaf. It still had the structure in tact, a tiny bit of the red tinge of an oak leaf in the fall. I finally had an excuse to pick up and look at leaves again. I then found a bit of moss on the ground as to have multiple samples to look at. Immediately, I was transported back to "camping" in my yard, looking at leaves and pretending I was some sort of explorer.

With the Foldscope, I took a look at the leaf and the moss, and it was amazing. With just these pieces of paper put together, I had the ability to unlock the secrets and answers I desperately desired as a kid. The photos (attached below) may be a bit blurry due to my phone camera, but they hold the key to identification, to understanding, and to helping each child's curiosity of the world, of the ecology of everything to make sense to them and to inspire a love for the mysteries of how and why the world and environment around us behaves the way it does. It gives the power to accurately identify what kind of moss you're holding, what the leaf's structures are, what a tiny piece of a plant tells about the whole.

The Foldscope is inspiring to me on an intellectual level as it has the ability to bring science to everyone but also it has the ability to inspire further change in this direction for more fields of science which have been locked away behind exclusionary towers. While I am in the policy field, I am still an eager child with a thirst for mystery when I use the Foldscope, and I am grateful to feel that again. I conducted this project as part of Professor Pringle's EEB321 class at Princeton University.