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Lego Microscope

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Re: Lego Microscope

#91

Post by unbalancedevh »

greenwich26 wrote: post #81
eigenket wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a pet theory - in north america you have a popular snack called an eggo (pluralised to eggos) thats basically a waffle. I think americans started calling lego legos because they were already calling eggos eggos. In the uk and europe generally we don't have eggos, so we don't have legos.

More likely, the Americans lengthen the e in the first syllable into almost a diphthong, like /eɪ/, and shorten the "o" in the second syllable into a schwa kind of sound that can comfortably be followed by /z/. Meanwhile, in British and many European accents, the first syllable is short and strongly stressed /ɛ/, and the o is /oʊ/, and you can't add an s without contorting your mouth in some horrible way. Which is wh…

As an American who grew up playing with and saying "legos," I've never heard anyone pronounce it the way you're suggesting.

Re: Lego Microscope

#92

Post by app4soft »

MarkusWandel wrote: post #89

Note how this is built in the "stacked" method, i.e. old school Lego. Even with technical parts, this was uniquely accessible. My proudest achievement was a smooth running, jamproof pump for elevating marbles; you can see it from about 0:27 in this old camcorder video: https://youtu.be/Mw3dUbRfMSw?t=24 These Legos encouraged engineering thinking all the way and were the defining toy of my childhood. Modern Legos are…

JFTR, There are few other projects on Lego-based microscope design on GitHub[0], for example IBM's MiscroscoPy[1].

[0] https://github.com/search/?o=desc&q=lego+microscope&s=update...

[1] https://github.com/IBM/MicroscoPy

Re: Lego Microscope

#94

Post by tragomaskhalos »

eigenket wrote: post #47
jerf wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Lego corporation is welcome to care about that for trademark reasons, but the rest of us don't really have a need to do so. "Legos" is clearly in common usage, failure to YELL ABOUT LEGO IN ALL CAPS and all.

Where are you from? In Britain I'm pretty sure I've never heard anyone say "Legos", it sounds very American to me.

It seems to be a fairly clear-cut geographical divide - Americans always pluralise, Britons never do. Without knowing but based on other lexical splits, I'd expect the majority of the rest of the Anglophone world to follow British usage, with Canada going either one way or the other. Usually Americans can cite 17c usage as a precedent - not in this case !

Re: Lego Microscope

#97

Post by jacquesm »

retSava wrote: post #83
jerf wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Lego corporation is welcome to care about that for trademark reasons, but the rest of us don't really have a need to do so. "Legos" is clearly in common usage, failure to YELL ABOUT LEGO IN ALL CAPS and all.

Ugh Lego and trademarks. My wife and I had Lego threaten to sue us for trying to import "legos" of mass destruction, it seems. We ordered a lego-compatible kit, which is ok I think, since it's only the lego figure that is patented Lego, the logo and name of course trademarked to Lego, and any brand cooperation to respective rights holders (eg Star Wars). However, a kit without Lego names or logos, and without Lego-fi…

You're right to be bitter, especially so because Lego has a pretty sordid history in this respect, the only reason they exist is because the founder copied someone else's IP and made a bundle of money on it. At the root of every great fortune there is a great crime. Oh, and the original inventor committed suicide. Those little details.

Re: Lego Microscope

#99

Post by MarkLowenstein »

eigenket wrote: post #68
mitchdoogle wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strange because as an American I've almost always heard to them referred as Legos. As a kid, my friends and I said, "let's play with Legos". My parents would say " get these legos off the floor". Seems odd to me to think of these phrases without the "s" on lego

I have a pet theory - in north america you have a popular snack called an eggo (pluralised to eggos) thats basically a waffle. I think americans started calling lego legos because they were already calling eggos eggos. In the uk and europe generally we don't have eggos, so we don't have legos.

I love pet theories so I hate to disagree. I've personally said the word "Legos" about 1M times in my life and it's mostly because Legos always come in groups, groups with a lot of items. You have to have a plural word to refer to them.

Also (child of the 70s) I am certain that I was calling mine Legos before I even knew about Eggo waffles. Third - boy I'm really piling on, sorry - I don't think I've ever referred to multiple Eggo waffles as "Eggos", probably because there's already "waffles" for that.

Re: Lego Microscope

#100

Post by LetThereBeLight »

whoisburbansky wrote: post #44
snypher wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, even $10 for the paper microscope is too much. It was designed to be cheap to increase access to instruments and make them more likely to be used. Selling them in this way really makes me wonder where the profit goes. For comparison I have a Carson Microbrite 60x-120x and it was $12. Edit: as an aside, how do they have discontinued items in their store that are for 'international' orders only?

I was under the impression that the individual kits are sold for much more in order to be able to fund subsidized kits for classrooms.

This is correct [1].

> Why the difference in price between Deluxe Individual Kits and Classroom Kits?

>Our mission is to bring bring affordable scientific tools to everyone (not just communities who have the resources - but everyone). For any of this to be possible, our business model balances our cost of operations with offering extremely low-cost (low-profit) products.

>We find this balance through a pricing structure that operates on a 2-tier system: high price point kits for individual Foldscopes (Deluxe Individual Kits), and low price point kits for bulk Foldscopes (Classroom Kits).

>We arrived at this pricing structure for many reasons, but primarily because the reality of fulfillment and shipping means we cannot ship a single Foldscope that costs roughly $1 in parts to produce at a $1 dollar price while being sustainable. Overall, we make a profit only from our high price point kits, this profit allows for us to exist and produce any microscopes at all, and this profit also subsidizes our low price point kits (which we do not profit off of), in which offer Foldscopes for as inexpensive as $1.75 each!

[1] https://www.foldscope.com/faq

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