Chamber of reflections

Unravel the mystery of the secret rooms!

Warn­ing! Only un­der adult su­per­vi­sion

Equip­ment

  • in­ter­ro­ga­tion cham­ber from the "Re­flec­tions" set from the MEL Sci­ence sub­scrip­tion;
  • draw­ings of a pump­kin and skele­ton;
  • glue.

Step-by-step in­struc­tions

Take the room cutout from the “Re­flec­tions” set. Glue a skele­ton to the door of the room clos­er to you and a pump­kin to the door of the sec­ond room and as­sem­ble the “Cham­ber of re­flec­tions.” Il­lu­mi­nate the clos­est room and look through the win­dow – you’ll see the pump­kin. Now il­lu­mi­nate the sec­ond room in­stead of the first, and through the same win­dow you’ll see the skele­ton! You can light up the rooms in turn and watch through the win­dow as the char­ac­ters re­place each oth­er!

Process de­scrip­tion

A semi-trans­par­ent mir­ror re­flects about 80–90% of light, let­ting in the re­main­ing 10–20%. The im­age you see de­pends on how the rooms are lit rel­a­tive to each oth­er. In the first room, the im­age is lo­cat­ed un­der the win­dow and is not di­rect­ly vis­i­ble, but you can clear­ly see its re­flec­tion when the room is lit. Some of the light en­ters the back room and il­lu­mi­nates the sec­ond im­age, but there is much more re­flect­ed light in the first room. When the light il­lu­mi­nates the far room, 10–20% of the light pass­es through into the nea room. In this case, the light from the im­age in the far room over­pow­ers the weak re­flec­tion from the first room. There­fore, you can clear­ly dis­tin­guish the im­age on the far wall of the cham­ber!

This and oth­er cool ex­per­i­ments await you in your MEL Sci­ence sub­scrip­tion