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Light and sight



This area of the exhibition is dedicated to probably the greatest natural phenomenon anywhere: human perception. Here, you can experience yourself as a phenomenon.

Amazing experiments show how sensory stimuli and perception are connected and which individual mindscape the brain constructs in this process. Many exhibits will surprise you even as you walk by them: you won't discover what your brain is automatically trying to correct until you are just a few steps away from the Reversed Perspective exhibit, for example.

And because dialogue is often the only way to verify much of what we believe to be our perception, the exhibition as a whole is presented in a highly interactive way. So, prepare to be especially fascinated by the Machine to be another with which you can find out how it probably feels to be in another person's shoes.

The Rotating Tunnel that pinpoints the role of sight in keeping your balance is a particularly great exhibit for visitors with a strong stomach! The Ames Room and the Distorted Room will also amaze and fascinate visitors with optical illusions
Exhibit-Links
11374 Haupt

"Delta Phi"

Optical phenomenon: caustics. The surface of this object resembles that of moving water. Illuminated from above, it reflects incoming light rays in various…

10006 Detail

Additive Color Mixing

Mixing light colors. Play with red, green, and blue light, and with their brightness. When overlapped and adjusted optimally, red, green, and blue produce…

10297 Haupt

After Image

Seeing the void. A powerful flash of light triggers a photochemical process on our retina. This process lasts longer than the brief light flash that…

10018 Haupt

Anti Gravity Mirror

Half a person becomes whole. Reflect the right half of the body, and there you have it: a complete person. It’s fascinating to watch them move. Can you manage…

10030 Haupt

Aurora

A different kind of reflection. Colored filters in a mirror: why don’t we simply see their exact image? The surface of the mirror is rough. Restless,…

10037 Haupt

Banana

If you place a blue filter exactly on the yellow banana, the banana appears green - logical, isn't it? A larger blue filter that also covers the white…

10301 Haupt

Benham's Disc

Benham’s disks: seeing colors where there are none. The disks display patterns with black and white shapes. When these disks rotate, we perceive colors. When…

10249 Phänomen

Bent Laser Light

Diffraction patterns: when light is deflected. When light encounters a fine structure (like a hair), it is deflected by it. Here, laser light is deflected as…

10046 Detail

Blind Spot

Wasn’t there an orange? Stare at the apple with one eye and slowly bring it closer to your face. At a certain distance, the orange beside the apple seems to…

10049 Detail

Blood Vessels of the Eye

Recognizing what we normally never see. In front of (not behind) the retina of our eye, there is a network of blood vessels. We don’t see it. Our brain…

11034 Detail

Blue Lightning Tube

by Wayne Strattman Somewhat oversized, but in principle a transparent fluorescent tube with an unorthodox gas filling. It is under relatively high pressure so…

10125 Haupt

Color Contrast

How blue blue can be. Two color squares, one lighter, one darker. Are we sure? As different as we perceive them, they actually share the same color. We…

10122 Haupt

Colour Removal

The prism has a splitting effect. White light is composed of spectral colors. The prism separates it so that they become visible. Color filters only let…

10128 Detail

Colour Reversal

A red tree turns entirely green. Why does the tree change its color? If we fix our gaze on an image long enough, the color receptors (cones) in our eyes lose…

10124 Haupt

Coloured Shadows

Three lights for shadows in six colors. Red. Green. Blue. Three lamps illuminate the white background. On it, we see six shadows of different colors: a…

10223 Detail

Corner Reflector

Cat’s eye = reflector. In the headlight’s beam, it lights up, clearly visible to the driver: the “cat’s eye.” The pedestrian next to it barely notices it,…

10050 Detail

Corpuscles of the Eye

Checking the pulse! Red blood cells absorb blue light particularly well. When we look into a blue light source, we see pulsating dots. A whole network of…

11078 Detail

Critical Angle

When does total reflection begin? Light usually travels in a straight line. What happens when it encounters a boundary surface? Depending on the angle of…

10158 Haupt

Disappearing Glass Rods

Brought before your eyes: Optical density. Similar to how a drinking straw appears bent in a glass – here is another way to illustrate the phenomenon of…

10082 Haupt

Double Refraction in Calcite Crystals

Viewed through Iceland spar: The lettering appears doubled. Light entering this Iceland spar calcite crystal is split into two beams with opposite…

10046 Detail

Edges communicate Information

Dot, white, somewhat mysterious. Two gray panels, each with a cross. To the right, a white area: In one case, the area is sharply defined against the gray…

10863 Detail

Experiments with polarized Light

Playing with light and colors. Light is a wave – and its oscillations vibrate in different directions. With polarization filters and everyday objects, this…

10033 Detail

Eye Viewer

Pupils: an astonishing reaction. One eye dazzled, two pupils respond. The pupil’s reaction to light is an involuntary reflex. To some extent, our retina can…

10322 Haupt I

Fantascope

Forerunner of modern cinema. Phenakistes = deceiver: two printed disks with radial slits create fantastic “films.” This happens when they are rotated in…

10253 Haupt

Favourite Uncle

Polarization + collage = Polage®. "Prometheus" is a unique work of art, layered on multiple levels. A picture that continuously changes, surprising and…

10140 Haupt

Fresnel Lens

Thin lens, big effect. When two visitors look at each other through this large Fresnel lens, they see the other person with an enormous upper body. Since…

10115 Haupt

Frozen Hand

Freeze! The right hand moves to the left – and then moves back. And yet, it remains still. The stroboscopic flash always illuminates the hand in the same…

11012 Haupt

Ghost Images

"Triple Eye Lightsticks" Twelve multicolored, vertically arranged LED rods flicker. As the gaze slowly sweeps from left to right, images, text, and patterns…

11266 Detail

Giant Pin Screen

The largest Pin Screen in the world. With 250,000 movable plastic pins, the world’s largest Pin Screen creates three-dimensional impressions of fingers,…

10157 Phänomen

Glass Bead Rainbow

Refracting light, reflecting light. Tiny glass beads illuminated by a flashlight: a rainbow appears! They act like prisms, these glass beads. They split the…

10132 Detail

Grease Spot Photometer

A spot leading to enlightening insights. What does the grease spot on the paper between the two lamps tell us? The grease-spot photometer was originally…

10173 Phänomen

Half Shadow

Goethe’s shadow. White lamp on, red lamp on as well: the hand casts a red and a green shadow! We see colors that aren’t actually there. How can that be? The…

10427 Haupt

Hermann Grid and Scintillating Grid with Variants

A static image that flickers. Viewed from a certain distance, with a steady gaze, these images flicker. They scintillate. The Hermann grid seen up close: at…

10181 Phänomen

Hot Spot

Your reflection is really hot! A matter of opinion, obviously. And a matter of perspective. One thing is certain: everyone can find a hot spot here. The…

10044 Phänomen

Image Relay

Face to face. Seeing your partner differently: how does your counterpart now appear to you when viewed through one, two, or three lenses? One of the four…

11023 Detail I

Ju-Ju Bees

As if by magic: glowing bugs. Inside a double-walled glass bowl filled with noble gas lie dozens of modified light bulbs, also filled with noble gas. A simple…

11015 Phänomen

Light Deformation

"Successioni luminose" – physics turned upside down. Light deforms metal: physical laws are seemingly – and visibly – turned on their head here. A white…

10250 Detail

Light Island

Reflex – simply play with light. Direct light, mix light colors, experiment with the transparency of filters and materials, and explore refraction: freely…

10549 Detail

Light Refraction

What paths does light take? Light travels in straight lines in a homogeneous medium like air or water. At the boundary between different materials, its…

10252 Detail

Light Spiral

The light spins! Polarized white light enters a stationary cylinder filled with a sugar solution. The sugar molecules cause a left-handed rotation of the…

10045 Phänomen

Look into Infinity

How many of me are there? One mirror reflects another. Your image is reflected so many times that counting them all becomes simply impossible. Almost a…

10527 Detail

Magic Wand

Persistence of vision. Light is actually invisible. If it doesn’t hit our eyes directly, we can’t see it. Without a screen, a slide projection isn’t very…

10457 Phänomen

Make the Invisible Visible

Convection made clear and observable. When water is heated, it expands. It becomes lighter and rises. In the less heated water, it creates swirls. The heat…

10283 Detail

Microscope Model

Magnifying small objects. With a fixed microscope size, the shorter the focal length of the objective lens, the larger the image it produces. Here, the…

10186 Haupt

Moving Gray Areas

Remaining still while moving, turning, shrinking, growing. They move, these gray figures – yet they stay in the same place. Gray figures, thinly outlined in…

10419 Haupt

Moving Stripes

Until the eye wobbles… If the exposure time is too long, the camera cannot capture fast movements. Similarly, the image is blurry if we hold the eye still.…

11036 Phänomen

Multi-Color Luminglas

Glowing spider webs to lightning storms. "Multi-Color Luminglas™️" is a sandwich of glass plates filled with glass beads coated with phosphor. The interior…

11039 Detail

Neon Sinfonie

Pattern effect in plasma. A shimmering glass chalice – filled with fans of light. The "Plasma Chalice" demonstrates, in this chalice with an extremely long…

10299 Phänomen

Newton Rings

Light cancels out light. A simple glass plate under normal light. Under the orange, monochromatic light of a sodium-vapor lamp, a bizarre landscape is…

10303 Detail

Optical Lifting

More or less deep. Catching a fish with bare hands? A tricky task. Why? Where exactly is it swimming? Due to the refraction of light rays – when transitioning…

10547 Detail

Particle or Wave

Particle or wave? Both are correct. As an electromagnetic wave, light spreads out with all the typical characteristics of a wave. At the same time, it behaves…

10334 Detail

Pin Screen

200,000 needles – a fakir’s delight. Two hundred thousand needles suspended in a perforated board. They beg to be stroked. No pain involved. These needle tips…

10261 Haupt

Pinhole Magnifier

Sharp vision without magnifying optics. A small hole, no glass – yet a working magnifier? It does! The tiny hole focuses light so that it hits the retina at…

11020 Phänomen

Plasma Top

No cable – and yet it glows! When placed on a curved glass surface, the noble gas inside the sealed spinning top transitions into plasma, energized by the…

10341 Haupt

Pseudoscope

In reality … What if we viewed the world with an eye distance of 36 cm – instead of the usual 6 cm – and if the information intended for the left eye were…

10343 Haupt

Pulfrich Phenomena

This pendulum circles. Through the optics, this pendulum swings in an elliptical path. With a gray filter in front of the other eye, its direction changes.…

1034210343 Detail

Pulfrich Phenomenon

Simple trick, astonishing effect. An object is swinging. Observed with a dark filter in front of one eye: the swinging object now moves along a circular…

10352 Phänomen

Rainbow Smileys

From black and white to a burst of colors. Disks with black-and-white patterns, illuminated by a white lamp. But this lamp has a trick up its sleeve! It…

10351 Detail

Real-Virtual, Virtual-Real

Image and/or reflection. In a bulging glass vessel illuminated from below, a small object hangs. Or are there two? The glass body behaves like a concave…

10435 Haupt

Refracting Telescope

Two lenses, one revolution. This surprisingly simple instrument revolutionized astronomers’ view of our universe! Essentially, the Kepler telescope consists…

11043 Detail

Refraction up to Total Internal Reflection

Deflecting a laser beam. Light travels in straight lines as long as it remains in a homogeneous medium. At the boundary between air and water, its propagation…

10426 1

Scintillating Screen & Hermann Grid

Why TV hosts don’t wear patterned shirts. Patterns appear within the pattern. At least when observed for a while. Dark lines emerge, then start flickering,…

11316 Haupt

Shadow Casting Panel

Shadows are information. In the "shadow projection plate," the visual information (pixel values) of two different images is stored on a single medium. Each of…

11318 Haupt

Shadow Cloud

Where there is light, there is also shadow. Secrets are revealed – through shadows! A large, strangely shaped sphere, illuminated by a spotlight, casts a…

11317 Detail

Shadow Pendulum

The shadow reveals. The light conceals. Sometimes, shadows make things visible – while brought into the light, these same things become invisible. “tik” and…

10165 Detail

Sliding Gray Step

Everything in the gray zone. Light and dark are not absolute values for our perception. Because we do not perceive the gray of the stripes in isolation, but…

10244 Haupt

Slow Blue

Slow Blue. Three light points move at exactly the same speed. Yet, the blue point appears to lag behind the others. The effect is stronger or weaker depending…

11315 Detail

Small Pin Screen

Impression and imprint. Press the pins to create a three-dimensional representation. Hand imprint or greeting message? Both. The image is quickly erased – and…

10387 Phänomen

Soap Film Painting

A film with a bulge. Beautiful, the colors that appear when the wide, tall soap film forms! Its colorful patterns are constantly changing. They clearly…

10372 Haupt

Sophisticated Shadows

Shadows: much more than just the absence of light. How many penumbras and umbras form when you stand in front of ten light sources? With a dark disk held in…

10553 Haupt

Spectra

Elements and their colors. Distinguishing individual hues from a color impression: it’s as challenging as identifying individual instruments in an orchestra.…

10423 Detail

Squirming Palm

Rotating pattern and its afterimage. Stare at the rotating dot pattern for a while, then look at the palm of your hand: it now seems to rotate too – but in…

11037 Phänomen

Still Empty

“Still Empty”: The attempt to fill a glass with light. What a Sisyphean task! The beam (plasma, a secret mixture of noble gases) continuously flows into the…

10418 Phänomen

Street Lamps

At night, all cats are gray! A colorful card (under normal light): under monochromatic orange light, it loses its colors. Illuminated by the yellow light of a…

11025 Haupt

Terrella

Solar wind – particle shower – aurora borealis. Terra = Earth. Terrella is its diminutive form. But this one packs a punch! The small metallic globe at the…

10121 Haupt

The Faraday Effect

Magnetic field affects polarization direction. Here, light is polarized by a filter and then sent through a liquid. On the other side, another polarizing…

11326 Detail

The Kiss II

Moving and moving: multiplex hologram. Also known as a stereogram or integral hologram, “The Kiss” is the most famous multiplex hologram, a development of the…

10447 Detail

Total Internal Reflection

Trapped light. A tip for the dear citizens of Schilda: here’s how you could have brought light into the windowless town hall! The method is based on a…

10103 Phänomen

Touch the Spring!

Or maybe not? It appears incredibly real: a three-dimensional image – here a feather – reflected by a spherical mirror. Impossible to touch.

10227 Haupt

Touching the Knife (or not)

Ouch! A Swiss army knife floats freely in the air. Appearance and reality: no one gets cut by this knife. Reaching for it ends in thin air. What we see is…

10068 Haupt

Trapezoidal Window

Half a turn forward, half a turn back. A window, drawn in perspective, thus takes on a trapezoidal shape. Suspended by a nylon thread, it rotates on its own…

10417 Haupt

Unwanted Light Reflections

Unwanted reflections – a simple trick. Photographers are familiar with this: light reflections on glass or water surfaces – and they can be disruptive. A…

10468 1

Vibrating Pin Screen

Pulsating images. Almost a quarter-million swinging pendulums! Nails of varying lengths, suspended in a perforated board and set in motion. The oscillation…

10494 Detail

Waterfall Effect (Rotating Spirals)

Illusory motion, its direction, and afterimages. As the disc spins, the spiral patterns seem to turn inside out. Then, after focusing on the patterns for a…

10564 Haupt

Wave Patterns

Waves on the surface of a thin layer of water become clearly visible with a suitable projection. A vibrating beam produces waves with straight-line crests.…

10862 1

What is Polarization?

Light and oscillations. Normal, unpolarized light is a mixture of light waves with different oscillation directions. When all light waves have the same…

10251 Haupt

Wheel of Life

Does our brain work like a film camera? Similar to a flipbook, an endless film plays here. The twelve tiny light dots are the main actors. Despite this sparse…

11035 Detail

White Plasma Plume

Art with the fourth state of matter. Beautiful, this work by Wayne Strattman. Elegant, the glowing white plumes in “White Plasma Plumes” as they move.…

10485 Detail

Why is the Sky blue?

… and why does the sun blush? The sky could be black as night, couldn’t it? After all, we’re looking directly into the nearly black universe. To understand…

10084 Haupt

Wire Mesh Sculpture

Movement illusion. With a poetic touch, this artwork depicts movement illusions that underlie film and television technology. The wire figures differ only…

10096 Haupt

You & Me

Faces merging. Depending on the lighting, viewed through the semi-transparent mirror, two faces become one. Does the other person’s face dominate? Then the…

thema-Links

Biology

Optics

Physics

Seeing

Senses

more to browse
11967 Phänomen

Current and magnets

You are electromagnetic From dancing magnets to currents in your own body: experience electromagnetism up close.

Main Aktivität Sterben und Leben

Dying and living

What makes biology so exciting? Life itself - it is tricky, adaptable, merciless, unpredictable. This topic is worthy of its own area at Technorama. The…

Main mechanikum

Mechanicum

Power, momentum and spin - a game with gyroscopes, pendulums and springs.

11800 Haupt

Mindscapes

This exhibition is dedicated to what is probably the greatest natural phenomenon of all: human perception.

10210 Phänomen II

Water, nature, chaos

Experience the beauty of nature from its most fascinating and phenomenal side.