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In this activity, learners create a simple “top” from a CD, marble and bottle cap, and use it as a spinning platform for a variety of illusion-generating patterns.

In this activity, learners explore what happens when polarized white light passes through a sugar solution.

Make a big canvas of iridescent color with pvc pipe! In this Exploratorium Science Snack, you'll need to cut and assemble some PVC pipe, but the pay-off, the soap-bubble canvas, is big.

In this optics activity, learners examine how a transparent material such as glass or water can actually reflect light better than any mirror.

By making models of light waves with paper, learners can understand why different colors appear in bubbles.

In this optics activity, demonstrate diffraction using a candle or a small bright flashlight bulb and a slide made with two pencils.

In this activity, learners explore chemiluminescence and fluorescence. Learners examine 3 different solutions in regular light, in the dark with added bleach solution, and under a black light.

In this activity, learners make their own heat waves in an aquarium.

In this activity, learners make a photographic image—without a camera!

In this activity, learners overlap the three primary colors to see how all other colors are made.

Do you have a hard time matching paint swatches with your furniture? When you consider human perception, color is context dependent.

In this optics activity, learners examine how polarized light can reveal stress patterns in clear plastic.

In this trick, hold your hand over a burning candle without getting burned, by reflecting and transmitting the light of two candles. This activity is best suited as a demonstration.

Look at pictures through different color filters and you'll see them in a new way. People have used color filters in beautiful photography or sending secret messages.

Have you ever heard of a camera without a lens? In this activity, learners create a pinhole camera out of simple materials. They'll see the world in a whole new way: upside down and backwards!

This science activity demonstrates the dominant eye phenomena. What does your brain do when it sees two images that conflict?

In this activity, learners make a photographic image--without a camera!

In this activity, learners use their strength to light a light bulb. A chain made from paper clips is placed in series with a battery and flashlight bulb.

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.

In this activity, learners explore liquid crystals, light and temperature. Using a postcard made of temperature-sensitive liquid crystal material, learners monitor temperature changes.