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Water Illusions: Refraction & Magnification
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Learners demonstrate how water can distort, refract and magnify light.
Make a Telescope
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In this optics activity, learners make a simple telescope using two lenses and a cardboard tube. Learners construct the telescope and then calculate its magnification.
See the World Through Color-Filtering Lenses
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In this activity, learners examine how colored lenses act like filters and absorb all colors of light except for the color of the lenses.
Upside-Down Town
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In this activity, learners explore ray optics. Learners discover that they can use a magnifying glass to create an upside-down image.
Glass and Mirrors: An Inside Look at Telescopes
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This hands-on astronomy activity allows you to create a “cutaway” telescope to clearly show how reflector and refractor telescopes work.
Personal Pinhole Theater
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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!
Liquid Lens
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In this activity, learners discover that they can create a lens from a water drop. Learners test their lens by looking at words or pictures.
Slide Projector Activities
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This resource contains several mini-explorations using a slide projector as a light source to investigate light and the properties of images.
Bending Light
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In this optics activity, learners make a lens and explore how the eye manipulates the light that enters it.
Bring it into Focus
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In this activity (page 2 of PDF), learners play with a lens and a piece of paper to focus an image on the paper. Learners look at different things, and see how the lenses affect the image.
Conversation Piece
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Focus sound through a balloon! In this Exploratorium activity, you'll use dry ice to create a balloon that's a sound lens.
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.
Laser Jello
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In this activity, learners use gelatin as a lens to investigate the properties of laser light.
Pictures From Light
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Did you know that using a lens one can bend light to make pictures of the world? It's true!
Cardboard Opaque Projector
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In this activity, learners construct a projector out of cardboard to view their favorite images (such as storybook illustrations) on the wall.
Cardboard Box Camera Obscura
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In this activity, learners construct a device that projects images onto a surface, so they can trace landscapes and other sights.