An interactive science museum-style exhibit for physics education. 4 concave mirror chambers are employed here to create holograms of marbles, each lit from the inside with a colour changing LED. These represent photons, mass-less packets of energy that make up light. As each photon is illuminated the user must reach for it, only to realise it's a hologram, and not of any substance at all! A capacitance sensor detects the user's hand, switches off the photon and illuminates another, creating a perpetual game of chase, much like the “whack-a-mole” fairground game.
The device is driven by a program written in C++, uploaded to an Arduino microcontroller. There are 3 other modes to select, each aiming to convey another characteristic of light. The “constructive” and “destructive” modes show interference patterns for the 4 photons, illustrating the wave nature of light. While the “frequency” mode demonstrates the electromagnetic spectrum, with the photons changing colour as the frequency is increased using the dial on the front panel.
This educational product was developed as part of the Design Greets Physics project at Central Saint Martin’s College for the MA Industrial Design course. Interviews and demonstrations were conducted as part of the research at schools, colleges and universities.
