"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…

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…

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…

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…

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,…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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,…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Fantascope

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

Favourite Uncle

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

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…

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…

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…

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,…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Light Deformation

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

Light Island

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

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Model Eyeball

Nearsighted/farsighted: it makes a difference. We can see objects clearly both up close and far away. This is because our eye muscles can change the shape of…

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…

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.…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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.…

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…

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…

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…

Refracting Telescope

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

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…

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,…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Spectra

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

Spinning with Light Threads

Rope, strobe, sculptures. Three ropes spin, one faster, the other slower. Illuminated by colorful strobe light, they transform into light sculptures. The…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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.

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…

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…

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…

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…

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.…

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…

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…

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.…

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…

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…

Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing

Or a Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing? Depending on whether you look through the red or the blue filter, you will see a sheep or a wolf. If you look behind the…

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…

Biology

Optics

Physics

Seeing

Senses

Current and magnets

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

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…

Mechanicum

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

Mindscapes

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

Temporary Exhibition "World of sound"

30 exhibits invite visitors to explore, play, and discover. Whether playfully or analytically, "World of sound" takes you on a journey into the fascinating…

Water, nature, chaos

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