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- Hola, welcome to the Exploratorium my name is Desire Whitmore and I'm a science educator here in the Teacher Institute. The exploratorium is a public learning laboratory full of fun, exciting and thought-provoking exhibits that help us explore scientific phenomenon. What you may not know is that the teacher Institute also creates hundreds of miniature snack sized versions of our exhibits called Science Snacks which you can build wherever you are these are available for free on our website. Today, I'm going to share with you one of my favorite exhibits, the pixel table and its corresponding Science Snack pixel tube. Pixel table is an actual table that allows us to see some very unusual things what color does the table appear to you? Now, I'm going to place my hand underneath the table and I'd like you to pay attention to what happens what do you notice? There's now a hand shaped shadow that appears on the table you may see some colors that you did not notice before you may also notice some interesting shapes that were not as noticeable before. Let's look at one more thing this screen which is black to block out light except for this ring which light is allowed to pass through, what do you notice now? Finally what will happen when we put this screen in which is full of smaller holes that allows light to pass through. Wooow, you're probably wondering how the pixel table's made and what's underneath it and you might also be thinking of all kinds of different experiments and investigations that you can do to try to figure that out. Now, I'm not going to show you how this table is made but I am going to share with you my mini version called the pixel tube which you can make with simple and customizable materials. This Science Snack includes instructions on how to build it and it also explains some of the science behind how it works. The recipe calls for some very simple items like tape, rubber bands and construction paper another very important ingredient for this snack is Mylar. You may have seen Mylar before on helium balloons that you can buy in the store for celebrations. It's this very shiny material that reflects light very well we are going to cut it up into strips and roll those strips into tubes that act like mirrors. These mirrors reflect the light and cast it onto a screen made of wax paper. Now, Mylar might not be something that's easy to find in your home like cling wrap or wax paper. But the great thing about snacks is that they're very customizable. You can easily exchange one ingredient in the recipe for another for example, this one I made out of Mylar this snack however, I actually used these shiny wrappers that I find from my breakfast snacks and then this one I actually made out of aluminum foil that I found in my kitchen. You can also customize your snack by making it out of different colored, construction paper or I actually made this one out of cardboard that I found and I folded it up into a triangle. Now let's go and test out these pixel tubes at different exhibits that use light in the museum. Here's an exhibit called sun painting that makes rainbows using light from the sun what do you notice when I put my pixel tubes into the rainbow light? This exhibit is called colored shadow investigator where you can look at shadows caused by a blue, a red and a green light. This exhibit is called Aurora and it features colored tiles that change the color of light as it passes through them. This exhibit is called sophisticated shadows it features a combination of many lights. Have you figured out what's underneath the pixel table yet? If you haven't have you thought of new experiments and investigations that you wanna try with your homemade pixel tube. As I mentioned before, this Science Snack is very customizable. You can cover it in all kinds of things you can also make different kinds of viewing screens with different transparent materials. You can also play with different diameter mirrored tubes that you create or you can fold them in different ways to look at different kinds of reflections can you maybe make a really short pixel tube? What do you think would happen if you made a really long pixel tube? Whatever you decide to build I hope that you have fun exploring light and shadow.