Spectrum goggles

Colored hide-and-seek

Difficulty:
Danger:
Duration:
20 minutes

Safety

  • Carefully review the general safety advice on the back of the box cover before starting the experiment.
  • Disassemble the setup after the experiment.

Disposal

Dispose of solid waste together with household garbage.

Scientific description

We see objects because light is reflected off them into our eyes. The white beam from the sun or a lamp contains all the colors in a rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. When a white beam hits an object, it can absorb some colored rays and reflect others.

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The green hat , for example, absorbs all colored rays except green , which is reflected off the hat  and into the eye . If an object absorbs all the colors , we see black; if the object reflects the entire beam, we see white.

The colored cards from the set   are called optical filters. They absorb the rays of certain colors while allowing others to pass through. The blue filter  absorbs the red beam  within white light, and we perceive the rest of the light passing through the filter as blue . The red filter  absorbs the green and blue parts . Can you tell which colors are combined to form the red of this filter?

When white light hits a hidden maze page, the red parts reflect red light, the blue parts reflect blue light, and the white parts reflect every color. When you look at a picture through a red filter , it only lets the red reflected rays through. So, you see red from both the red and white parts of the paper. The dark color, which is the absence of light, represents the hidden part of the blue page. The blue rays reflected cannot pass through the red filter .

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Using this peculiarity, the illusion of a three-dimensional picture on a flat image can be achieved. To do this, one must draw what the object looks like if you look at it only with the right eye, and only with the left, and combine the two images into one picture. Then we need to send the first picture to the right eye (with a blue filter) and the second to the left (with a red filter). The brain will combine them into one three-dimensional picture.