For the third year, Photonics@UCI participated in the San Diego Festival of Science and Engineering. Just like the past year, we shared a large booth together with our friends at the Optics Institute of Southern California. We handed out all the Spectrobox kits that our friends at UCI helped us prepare and taught many young and eager students about the visible spectrum and how to make rainbows. Our Kaleidoscopes were also a huge success: children of all ages lined up to build their own color-pattern tubes. We also helped teach the students about how light interacts with molecules through the mobile app/game “Bond Breaker” produced by CaSTL. The last demo, which became a huge hit, was a simple but impressive optical illusion involving floating fake frogs. Many minds were blown. A demonstration and explaination of this illusion can be viewed here.
Meanwhile, on the table next to us, the Optics Institute of Southern California showcased the laser-wielding mobile robot Sparky the Optobot – the creation of Cory Hague from Irvine Valley College.
We want to thank everyone who made this possible, from the volunteers that donated their time and hand to prepare all the material, to our funding partners: CaSTL, OSA and SPIE.
Photos of this event, thanks to Donn Silberman, can be found here. A portion of them are shown below.
Optica and SPIE Student Chapter at the University of California, Irvine