Kaleidoscope

Scientific Enlightenment:

   A Kaleidoscope is a toy we often play with. As long as you look through the lens, you will see a beautiful 'flower' pattern. And every time the Kaleidoscope turns, the flowers inside are different. The patterns continue to change as you turn it, and you want to know why the patterns keep changing? Let's go and explore the mystery together!

Experimental Purpose:

1Experience the fun of creating a kaleidoscope by yourself.

2Feeling the mystery of scientific changes.

Experimental Cognition

1A kaleidoscope is an optical toy where colorful objects are placed at one end of a tube, a prism is placed in the middle of the tube, and the other end is sealed with a glass plate with a hole. Looking through the hole, one can observe beautiful symmetrical images.

2How do the patterns in a kaleidoscope come about? It turns out that they are created by the reflection of glass mirrors. A kaleidoscope is composed of a prism made up of three glass mirrors, and at one end, colored glass fragments are placed. These fragments reflect off the three glass mirrors, creating symmetrical patterns that look like a blooming flower.

3The principle of image formation in a plane mirror: According to the reflection of light, when light from the sun or a lamp illuminates a person, it is reflected onto the mirror.

Science Expansion:

The Kaleidoscope uses the principle of imaging with flat mirrors to create images through the refraction of light. In 1816, Sir David Brewster, a Scottish physicist, invented the Kaleidoscope. Brewster was primarily engaged in the study of optics and spectroscopy. He was very fond of optical experiments since his childhood and spent most of his life devoted to his beloved optics. One day, while studying the properties of light with multiple mirrors, he saw the scenes reflected multiple times in a few mirrors placed opposite to each other. He then placed some colored papers in the empty cavity formed by the mirrors and saw some symmetrical patterns. When he moved the position of the colored papers, the patterns changed. To enable the patterns to continuously change, he placed three angled mirrors in a cylinder and then placed the colored papers between the two layers of glass at the end of the cylinder. As the angle of the triangular mirrors changes, the number of images changes; when the images overlap, they form various patterns. By constantly rotating the Kaleidoscope, one can see the continuously changing patterns. In this way, he created a Kaleidoscope that can show different patterns just by gently rotating it. The Kaleidoscope achieved unexpected success overnight. This small thing that can produce beautiful patterns with a simple movement was considered a The television is gone. What's even more interesting is that once a pattern disappears, it can take several centuries to appear again, so every moment is worth appreciating, and every second is worth treasuring!

Scientific Exploration:

Refraction of light and reflection of light both occur at the boundary of two different media, but the reflected light returns to the original medium, while the refracted light enters another medium. Since the speed of light in these two different substances is different, the direction of propagation changes at the boundary of the two media, which is the reflection of light. Note: At the boundary of the two media, both refraction and reflection occur. The speed of the reflected light is the same as that of the incident light, while the speed of the refracted light is different from that of the incident light.

Experiment Report:

Based on the content learned in this section, describe a kaleidoscope using the principle of plane mirror imaging.