This really gets my blood flowing, it really is the future! The question is: can we get experimentation in biology, say, for high schoolers and undergrads, as e

This really gets my blood flowing, it really is the future! The question is: can we get experimentation in biology, say, for high schoolers and undergrads, as easy/cheap/interesting as computing? On the order of buying a good laptop, i.e. - $1,500. What can be done on the order of buying a rapid and a few sensors and a breadboard, $50-$100? Unfortunately pretty much biological equipment is so expensive and relatively hard to use. Case in point: my son is looking to measure amylase activity in the presence of various inhibitors for diabetes research. The cheapest spectrophotometer devices are $1k-$2k. Surely there must be a way to lose some accuracy but bring the price to $100-$200.