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Soap Bubble Shapes
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Learners explore three-dimensional geometric frames including cubes and tetrahedrons, as they create bubble wands with pipe cleaners and drinking straws.

CD Spinner
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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.

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

Bubble Tray
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In this activity, learners use simple materials to create giant bubbles.

Dye Like A Natural
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In this activity, learners stain fabrics--on purpose!

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

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.

Polarized Light Mosaic
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In this activity, learners use transparent tape and polarizing material to create and project beautifully colored patterns reminiscent of abstract or geometric stained glass windows--no glass required

CD Spectrometer
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In this activity, learners use a compact disc to make a spectrometer, an instrument used to measure properties of light.

Bird in the Cage
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In this activity about afterimages, learners explore what happens when receptor cells called cones in your eye's retina get tired.

Pixel Tube
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In this STEAM activity, learners create a "pixel tube" to explore reflections of light and color mixing.

On the Fringe (formerly Bridge Light)
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In this activity, learners trap a thin layer of air between two pieces of Plexiglas to produce rainbow-colored interference patterns.

Colored Shadows
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In this optics activity, learners discover that not all shadows are black. Learners explore human color perception by using colored lights to make additive color mixtures.

Bubbularium: See the Colors in Bubbles
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With little more than a flashlight, a straw, and a plastic lid, make an observatory so you can see the amazing colors in bubbles.

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

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

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.

Color Table: Color your perception
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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.

Blue Sky
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In this optics activity, learners explore why the sky is blue and the sunset is red, using a simple setup comprising a transparent plastic box, water, and powdered milk.

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