Given the phenomenal success of this Kickstarter project (13k backers, $2.76 million pledged towards a goal of $200k) you should be interested in SCiO–a miniature hand-held spectrometer.
This, my amigos, changes everything. It will take the guesswork out of buying the sweetest cantaloupe at the grocery store. It will let you see differences between closely-related plant subspecies (eventually if not already) and maybe see chemical differences or similarities between your family dog and the suspected love-child pup born to your neighbor’s female retriever.
The point is, we can now project our curiosity directly onto objects around us and measure calories, chemistry, toxins, vitamins and eventually much, much more.
Answers and understandings will come to questions we have not even thought to ask in the absence of a wy to “see” into the makeup of matter in our environment.
But maybe the hype outpaces the reality here. What do you think?
Start by watching the short video at the first link.
SCiO: Your Sixth Sense. A Pocket Molecular Sensor For All ! by Consumer Physics, Inc. – Kickstarter
SCiO is made to analyze … everything – GizMag
With that much funding, they can expand the applications quickly. I am pretty sure all the techies out there will embrace this new gadget. Science teachers will sure be seeing a new generation of Science Fair projects!