Lint- The generally grey stuff that is left over after drying your clothes.  A few people compost it. Some others use it to start a fire, since it is highly flammable. To most people however, lint is just something you clean of the lint trap in your dryer and toss into a near by bin.  Looking at it under the foldscope, I was able to see the composition of the lint. Earlier, I referred to  lint as “stuff”. That was because lint is really a combination of many left overs. Some of these include cloth fibers, plant fibers, hair, dead skin cells, and dust (or pollen).

Here are some pictures I took:

It is a little hard to see with the pictures, but under the foldscope I was able to see different strands and pieces of materials , made into a dense cluster. I could even see the individual colors of different strands. These different strands are customarily seen collectively as some shade of grey.  Strands of hair could also be seen commonly.  When looked at under the foldscope, the cluster of lint seems reminiscent of a birds nest.

~Nataraj Shivaprasad