LEGO^® Education SPIKE^TM Prime-based Atomic Force Microscope for Science Education

An atomic force microscope (AFM) is a powerful analytical tool for many fields of science and engineering. Despite its usefulness, the actual instrument is highly technical and expensive, rendering it inaccessible to a majority of practitioners in science and engineering education. Growing curiosity of students through the hands-on learning method is appealing to education managers. Adoption of LEGO^® or similar educational kits into a school environment can not only fascinate the interests of students for learning but also resolve the cost problems. Our conceptual AFM system constructed with LEGO^® Education SPIKE^TM Prime kit is very much suitable for explaining the principles behind the workings of an AFM while promoting students interests in experimental aspects of scientific instrumentation.