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- Stare at the bird. You need to stare at this bird for about 30 seconds. Staring requires attention, and it's not the way our eyes normally take in visual information about the world. Keep staring . In a few more seconds, I'm going to ask you to cast your gaze over to the cage. What do you think you're going to see Ready? Now look at the cage. Blink your eyes. What do you notice? Hi, and welcome to the Exploratorium. My name's Lori Lambertson, and I'm one of the Science Educators here, in the Museums Teacher Institute. These exhibits are the foundation of our work and provide opportunities to explore phenomena and figure things out for yourself. How would you like to have those kinds of opportunities at home? You can. Exploratorium staff have created hundreds of at home and classroom versions of our exhibits. We call these activities Science snacks. They're literally bite-sized versions of our exhibits using our Science snacks, which are available for free and online you can build your own Exploratorium at home. Today we're going to look at how to build bird in a cage. All of our science snacks provide information about how to build the exhibits snack and the science behind the phenomenon you're observing. To build bird in a cage, you can use colored paper, or you can use colored markers and draw your bird and your cage on pieces of paper. When you stared at the bird earlier and then glanced over to the cage, what did you notice? Many people see a bluish greenish bird-like shape a ghostly image in the cage. We call this an afterimage. The science of how those afterimages form is explained in the "What's Going On" section of our snack. But I wanna talk about something else. Did you notice if your bird stayed in the cage or if it flew away? If you're doing this snack with a friend or a family member, you can compare what your results were. Not everybody has the same experience. What I love about teaching and learning about our perception exhibits is this fact that all of our experiences are different and all of them are valid. I have a challenge for you. Can you and your friend figure out how to make the bird stay in the cage when you want it to stay in the cage and fly away when you want it to fly away, try it and see. Making afterimages is a well known activity and you don't need this cage and you don't need this bird to make it happen. If you have other colors and shapes you'd like to try, we encourage you to do that and make all the different colors you want to see what kinds of afterimage colors they create. If you're working with more than one person, you can work as a scientific community, try all the colors and keep track of which colors cause which afterimage colors. Have fun exploring building your community and learning together. As you make an Exploratorium at home.