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Jamie Kohl
Erin Rexin
Jennifer Wesley
Kaleidoscope
Project Overview:
For our project this semester, our group consisting of Jamie Kohl, Erin
Rexin and Jenne Wesley, is going to be constructing a life size kaleidoscope. The
kaleidoscope will be showing the physics concepts of viscosity, gravity, light
refraction, reflection, specular reflection, geometric optics and both complex and
concave mirrors.
Physics Concepts:
Our life sized kaleidoscope will be teaching many physics concepts. The
first that we will teach about is viscosity. Viscosity is a measure of the resistance
of a fluid to deform under shear stress. One might think of it as the “thickness”
of a liquid or a resistance to pouring. It describes the property of a fluid that
resists the force of friction causing the fluid to flow. So water is thought of as
“thin”, having a low viscosity, while olive oil is “thick” because it has a high
viscosity. In our kaleidoscope, we will have a low viscosity fluid that we will be
putting the “trinkets” in so that they float and flow freely. The next physics
concept shown will be gravity.
In physics, gravity is the tendency of objects with mass to accelerate
toward each other. Gravity is the weakest of four fundamental interactions in
nature. After gravity comes mirrors.
A mirror is a device whose surface has good specular reflection. Specular
reflection is the perfect mirror-like reflection of light. The most familiar type of
mirror is the plane mirror, which has a flat surface. Curved mirrors are also used
to produce magnified or demagnified images, but we will be using complex and
concave mirrors.
Light refraction is the turning or bending of any wave, such as a light or
sound wave, when it passes from one medium into another of different optical
density. An example of this is, say if you are looking at a straw through a glass
that is filled with a colored liquid, if you look at the glass at an angle; it looks like
the straw is broken.
Geometric optics, or ray optics describes light propagation in terms of
“rays”. The “ray” in geometric optics is an abstract object which his
perpendicular to the wavefronts of the actual optical waves.
How we will teach
Over all we will be teaching about optics and we plan on doing that by
having a visual project. We will teach about mirrors and the person can learn by
looking through to the end of the K-Scope and see the different shapes. The
mirrored panels on the inside of the k-scope with reflect and refract the shapes at
the end, hence the kaleidoscope.