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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.

Like water drops in falling rain, a CD separates white light into all the colors that make it up.

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

In this activity, learners create a cylindrical mirror to see themselves as others see them.

Did you know that a Slinky makes a handy model of earthquake waves?

In this activity about light and refraction, learners make a lens and magnifying glass by filling a bowl with water.

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.

In this activity, learners explore why the sky is blue. Learners model the scattering of light by the atmosphere, which creates the blue sky and red sunset, using a flashlight and clear glue sticks.

In this group activity, learners see and hear the speed of sound. A learner designated the "gonger" hits a gong, once every second, as the rest of the group watches and listens from a distance.

Make your own speaker with a magnet, wire, and paper cup! If you have a radio with a headphone plug and an old pair of headphones, this is a great tinkering activity.

Make your own simple speaker so you can listen to your favorite radio station. Just wind a coil, attach it to a piece of cardboard or Styrofoam, hold a magnet nearby, and listen.

This activity provides instructions for building a mirrored tube--a smaller and simpler version of a submarine's periscope--that lets you see around corners and over walls.

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

This activity provides step-by-step instructions on how to build a rain stick, a musical instrument originating in South America.

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.

When you teeth clatter, they make quite the racket disproportionately to how much they actually sound to someone else.

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!

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.

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.