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Giant Lens
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In this activity about light and refraction, learners discover how a lens creates an image that hangs in midair.
Opti-Top
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In this activity, learners will create an optical illusion top. Learners will explore color mixing, physics and design through this activity.
How Our Environment Affects Color Vision
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In this lab (Activity #1 on page), learners explore how we see color.
Motion Picture
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During this hands-on activity, learners are briefly exposed to moviemaking and animation, when they create their own thaumatropes.
Color Spy
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In this activity (16th on the page), learners play a variation of the "I Spy" game to explore color. Learners work in teams with each team assigned a color.
Afterimage
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In this activity about light and perception, learners discover how a flash of light can create a lingering image called an "afterimage" on the retina of the eye.
Phenakistascope
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In this optics activity, learners build an animation tool to make mini movies. When you spin a phenakistascope, the pictures move so quickly that your eyes and brain can't separate the images.
Gray Step
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In this activity, learners discover that it's difficult to distinguish between two different shades of gray when they aren't separated by a boundary.
Our Sense of Sight: How We Perceive Movement, Depth and Illusions
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In this activity, learners investigate visual perception as well as plan and conduct their own experiments.
Spinning Illusions
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In this activity, learners construct three optical illusion toys to examine how our brains play tricks on what we see.
Sliding Gray Step
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How can you make one shade of gray look like two? By putting it against two different color backgrounds! This activity allows learners to perform this sleight of hand very easily.
Benham's Disk
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In this activity, learners make a Benham Top to explore visual illusions and optics.
Depth Perception
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In this easy demonstration (3rd on the page), learners explore depth perception by conducting a test with two pencils.
Seeing Your Blind Spot
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This activity (aka "snack") provides instructions for discovering your blind spot. It is an exploration of light and visual perception using simple materials you may have around the house.
Seeing in the Dark
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In this activity (17th on the page), learners investigate why you cannot see colors in dim light.
Accommodating Accommodation
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In this demonstration (18th on the page), learners conduct a simple test to explore how the cornea refracts light, which is further bent by the eye lens through a process known as accommodation.
Stroboscope
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In this activity (posted on March 20, 2011), learners follow the steps to construct a stroboscope, a device that exploits the persistence of vision to make moving objects appear slow or stationary.
Pinhole Magnifier
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In this activity related to light and perception, learners use a pinhole in an index card as a magnifying glass to help their eye focus on a nearby object.
Spinning Cylinder: Make a triangle appear on a spinning wheel
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Spin a short piece of PVC pipe that's been marked up, and watch a triangle appear. Enjoy this optical illusion from the Exploratorium's Science Snack series.
Seeing Is Believing
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This activity is designed to accompany the PBS documentary about African-American chemist "Percy Julian: Forgotten Genius." Learners look through two cups with small holes in them to simulate what it'