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  • A visitor looks into the All Eyes on Me exhibit.
  • All Eyes on Me exhibit
  • Visitor look into the All Eyes on Me exhibit.
  • A visitor looks into the All Eyes on Me exhibit.
  • All Eyes on Me exhibit
  • Visitor look into the All Eyes on Me exhibit.

All Eyes on Me

Make yourself the center of attention—and reflect.

Situate yourself at just the right place in space in front of this parabolic mirror array and you’ll see dozens of your own eyeballs peering back at you.


Where:   Crossroads: Getting Started
Exhibit Developer:   Denise King, 2009

What’s going on?

The parabolic shape of this array of mirrors focuses incoming light rays together, causing them to converge to a single point (called the focal point) and then spread apart again. When you put your own eyeball at just the right place—roughly twice the focal length—you see your own eye reflected back at you from every mirror in the array.

Berenice Abbott photo of parabolic mirrors. This exhibit was inspired by a photo from a classic physics textbook. The Parabolic Mirror Has a Thousand Eyes was shot by the famous scientific photographer Berenice Abbott. (click image to enlarge)

 

Going further

Parabolic mirrors having a single smooth surface—as opposed to the fragmented view you see here—are found in car headlights, solar ovens, and reflecting telescopes.

 

External resources

Rogers, H. S. "Making Science Visible: The Photography of Berenice Abbott." In Photomediations Machine.

 
Phenomena: Image Formation, Parabolic Mirrors, Reflection
Keywords: eyes, focal point, mirrors, parabolas
Collections: Reflections

More to explore

Mirror, Mirror!
Watch Senior Scientist Paul Doherty's webcast on reflections and mirrors.

Related exhibits

Anti-Gravity Mirror
Anti-Gravity Mirror

Take off and fly in a mirror that makes half your body look whole.

Archimedes
Archimedes

Parabolic dishes collect and focus sound waves and reflect them to participants seated within them.

Giant Mirror
Giant Mirror

Pause to reflect in an oversized mirror with endless possibilities.

Listening Vessels
Listening Vessels

Hear here—with the help of a giant parabolic “ear.”


IMLS acknowledgment

This web project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services [MA-30-16-0175-16].

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