Art of reflection

Draw a star with a laser beam!

Warn­ing! Only un­der adult su­per­vi­sion

Equip­ment

  • small mir­rors;
  • plas­ticine;
  • laser point­er;
  • cylin­dri­cal con­tain­er of wa­ter.

Step-by-step in­struc­tions

Use plas­ticine to af­fix small mir­rors to four of the ver­tices of a five-point­ed star. Af­fix a cylin­der of wa­ter to the fifth ver­tex. Turn on the laser and di­rect it through the cylin­der of wa­ter – the star lights up!

Sci­en­tif­ic de­scrip­tion

Laser light is a dense clus­ter of par­al­lel beams that re­main par­al­lel even af­ter re­flec­tion. When we shine them through a cylin­der of wa­ter, re­frac­tion turns the light spot into a line. In this way, we can make the im­age of our “laser star” more dis­tinct!

Ex­cit­ing ex­per­i­ments are wait­ing for you in the MEL Sci­ence sub­scrip­tion!

Try it