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Seeing 3D
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Create 3D glasses and use them to explore color, light and optics. Fool your brain into 'seeing' three dimensions on a flat surface!

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.

Pupil
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In this activity, learners explore their eye pupils and how they change.

Seeing Your Retina
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In this quick optics activity, learners use a dim point of light (a disassembled Mini MagLite and dowel set-up) to cast a shadow of the blood supply in their retina onto the retina itself.

Magic Wand
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In this activity about light and perception, learners create pictures in thin air.

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.

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.

How Our Environment Affects Color Vision
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In this lab (Activity #1 on page), learners explore how we see color.

Anti-Gravity Mirror
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In this demonstration, amaze learners by performing simple tricks using mirrors. These tricks take advantage of how a mirror can reflect your right side so it appears to be your left side.

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.

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

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.

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.

Moiré Patterns
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In this activity about light and perception, learners create and observe moire patterns.

Shrinking Spot
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In this activity, learners control the (apparent) size of a hole with their brain.

Your Father's Nose
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In this fun optics activity, learners explore principles of light, reflection (mirrors), and perception. Learners work in pairs and sit on opposite sides of a "two-way" mirror.

Benham’s Disk
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In this activity (on page 2 of the PDF under GPS: Light and Color Activity), learners will see the illusion of colors produced by a rotating black and white image known as Benham’s Disk.

Mix-N-Match Light
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This is an online exhibit about color perception. Learners set a random background color and then try to mix red, blue, and green light to match.

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.

Benham's Disk
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In this optics activity, learners discover that when they rotate a special black and white pattern called a Benham's Disk, it produces the illusion of colored rings.