"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…
3D-Shadows
Shadows gain depth. Illuminated with red and green light, a tetrahedron casts a red and a green shadow on the screen. Viewed through glasses with red and…
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…
All Triangels are the same
Central projection: Using various triangular shapes to cast congruent shadows onto a patterned wall with equilateral triangles.
Angled Mirrors
Many polygons. Two mirrors positioned around an axis at various angles: a simple way to create shapes with many sides (polygons). At certain angles,…
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…
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…
Changing Sides
A wire cube rotates in front of a mirror. If you squint one eye and fix a front corner of the wire cube, you see a certain direction of rotation. If you now…
Christmas Balls
Round shapes, angular gaps. The spheres are indeed round, despite the triangular gaps between them. Can this really be? If a sphere is missing in the…
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…
Conic Sections with Laser
Ellipse, parabola, hyperbolic branch, or hyperbolic arm: Cross-sections of a plane through a geometric body. In this case, a cone. A laser beam circling the…
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,…
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…
Deep Walls
Shadows in motion - moving silhouettes. On a large projection surface, divided into 16 fields, shadow images move towards and away from each other. Each…
Depth Enhancer
Perceiving distances differently. The Tiefenverstärker (depth amplifier) artificially increases the distance between our eyes—from an average of 65 mm (in…
Die gelbe Toilette - Herren
Colors from Nowhere Under yellow light, the walls appear colorless. After a minute, normal lighting briefly turns on, revealing the vivid colors on the…
Digital Sundial
"Digital" sundial. It casts no shadow. Instead, it displays the time using illuminated numbers—without any electronics. A combination of aesthetics and…
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…
Droplet Fountain
Wave patterns. A single drop falls. In the fountain, a wave pattern appears. How does it develop towards the edge? A strike on the button at the edge…
Elliptical Mirror
This έλλειψις has only one goal. At one focus of this mirrored ellipse stands a rotating periscope. At the other focus, a colored cone. Looking at the…
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…
Farbenwechsel - Damen
Hidden Images Each toilet cubicle is alternately illuminated with pure red, yellow, and blue light. Images on the walls become visible only under a specific…
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…
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…
Human Pointer
The shadow shows Winterthur's local time. The scale on the ground indicates where to stand today. The shadow of the raised arm then shows the True Solar Time…
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…
Light games
Can you stage your own shadow theatre with simple materials? The exciting lighting and the play with the coloured shadows really set the scene for your…
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 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…
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…
Moiré
It’s all a matter of perspective. Black point clouds: this impression is created by two perforated plates mounted one behind the other at a certain distance.…
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…
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…
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…
Seelenspiegel
Colorful light is brought to life by your imagination. The interaction of light with various glass objects and filters creates fascinating color patterns on a…
Shadow Box
Flash! Your shadow remains on the wall. Biip, biip, biip and flash: you can already see your figure on the wall, in the position you have chosen for this…
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 Fence
Sun Pixels. At first glance, just a metal plate with holes. But depending on its orientation, an image or message emerges. What these “sun pixels” display…
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…
Shepherd’s Sundial
North? Not relevant. A simple sundial, like those used by shepherds for centuries. The advantage of this clock is that knowing the north direction is…
Sky Window
Perfectly Round Oval. A hole in the landscape. It reflects the sky. From a distance, this mirror appears to be perfectly circular. But upon closer…
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…
Soap Bubble Basin
Loooong bubbles For kids big and small: form soap bubbles several meters long. Sometimes, a bubble stretches into a tube large enough for a child to fit…
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…
Sonnenfänger
Visible eruptions. What’s happening on the Sun? The solar tracker reveals it as sunspots. Weak and strong eruptions that influence Earth’s magnetic field as…
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.…
Spider Sundial
Swiss Timing with Swiss flag. The drawing on the ground looks like a spider’s web, but it accurately shows the time for each date of the year. The advantage…
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…
The Circle’s the Limit!
A circle with many corners. Reflect green laser light to form a triangle, a quadrilateral, a pentagon, a … The more corners this polygon has, the more it…
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…
Three-dimensional Projection
3D – the cinema is made by the brain. From red and green shadows, plastic, three-dimensional objects emerge. Viewed through glasses with red and green…
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.
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…
Umkehr-Spiegel - Damen
Wait a Moment... Above the large sink mirror, a horizontal mirror is mounted at a right angle. Looking upward reveals an unusual reflection: the eyes seem to…
Umkehr-Spiegel - Herren
Unendliche Spiegelungen - Damen
Conduct Your Business Mindfully. In the restroom, a band of mirrors angled differently is mounted at seat height all around. You see yourself infinitely…
Unendliche Spiegelungen - Herren
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…
Watch Water Freeze / Ice Flowers
Watch Water Freeze Crystals form on the cold surface, like frost flowers on windows, a sight we see less often thanks to better insulation. Here, you can see…
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…
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…
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…
Anti-Gravity Mirror
Learn how to fly with this neat mirror trick. A reflection of your right side can appear to be your left side. Try this activity and you'll appear to perform…
Benham's Disk
A rotating black-and-white disk produces the illusion of color. Rotate this black-and-white pattern at the right speed, and the pattern appears to contain…
Blue Sky
Discover why the sky is blue and the sunset is red. When sunlight travels through the atmosphere, blue light scatters more than the other colors, leaving a…
CD Spectroscope
Make a truth teller for light. Turn an old CD into a spectroscope to analyze light—you may be surprised by what you see. Try pointing your CD spectroscope at…
Diffraction
Light can bend around edges. Light bends when it passes around an edge or through a slit. This bending is called diffraction. You can easily demonstrate…
Glue Stick Sunset
Why is the sky blue? That's a sticky question. Model the scattering of light by the atmosphere—which makes our sky appear blue and our sunsets red—by shining a…
Moire Patterns
Imperfect alignment can lead to interesting patterns. When you look through one chain-link fence at another, you sometimes see a pattern of light and dark…
Aus Rot und Grün wird ....) Farbmischung mit Kreiseln - inklusiv
bunte Papierscheiben tanzen. Plötzlich sehen wir Farben, die vorher gar nicht da waren. Wie kommt das? Und können wir mit nur drei Farben unsere…
CSI Technorama – forensics
Regardless of whether it is a burglary, an accident or a felony, crime scene investigations always begin with securing the evidence. Are there fingerprints?…
Discoveries in daily life – experiments with candles
The phenomena that can be observed with a lighted candle engender a wide range of topics in natural sciences. The flame of a candle not only fascinates us, it…
Entdeckung im Alltäglichen - Experimente mit Kerzen - inklusiv
Die Phänomene, die sich bei einer brennenden Kerze beobachten lassen, führen zu vielen verschiedenen Themen in den Naturwissenschaften. Kerzen lassen uns…
Have you ever seen an atom? – Atomic dimensions
Physics lessons in mainstream school education were extremely limited during the 20th century – especially when it came to expensive and complex experiments.…
Lighting effects in nature and the home – fluorescence
How can you light up fluorescent objects? Where do lighting effects occur? You extract fluorescent dyes from everyday objects like pudding mixes or laundry…
Red and green make …? - colour mixing with spinning tops
Mixing colours differently: We build spinning tops and let colourful paper discs dance. Suddenly we see colours that weren't there before. How is that…
Tracking atoms – composition of matter
Laser Kiosk
"Lucid" experiments with an extraordinary light: what is a laser, actually?
Acoustics
Aggregate states
Algorithms
Animals, plants, habitats
Atomic and quantum physics
Atomic structure
Automats
Biology
Buoyancy
Chaos
Characteristics of life
Chemical Reactions
Chemistry
Colors
Computer science
Cryptology
Currents
Data and information
Design elements
Earth sciences
Electricity
Electricity and energy
Electricity and magnetism
Elektromagnetismus
