First, Kenji Yoshino, a post-baccalaureate fellow at Grinnell College, came up with a way to build a microscope out of an old smartphone using just $10 worth of extra parts. Which is pretty awesome, in and of itself. But, then, scientist and blogger Bethany Brookshire tried to follow Yoshino’s instructions. She sort-of succeeded — after a lot of small failures. But it’s that story — about the messy, imperfect process of real-world DIY — that really rocks. Read it, and you’ll learn a lot about the process of making, and what it’s like to make somebody else’s project your own. In the real world, building the microscope is as much a learning experience as using the thing.